
Class ^ ^ 2-- 1 — 

Book ' -O wlj — 

Copight]^^ - 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



BY 
WILLIAM CARLETON 

AUTHOR OF "ONE WAY OUT** 



k^XA^ * 




BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright, 1913 

By Small, Maynard & Company 

(incorporated) 



Entered at Stationers' Hall 



sl^ls 



(0)CI.A343191 
^ / 



«> 



c 



is: 



TO 

HOLT 

TO WHOM WE IN OUR TOWN OWE 
MUCH OF OUR SUCCESS 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I A New Beginning ....... i 

II My Neighbors 21 

III Cold Facts .....»*.. 40 

IV A Town Asleep 55 

V Stirring Things Up ...... 64 

VI A Game Worth Playing 'J2 

VII The Pioneers 84 

VIII The New Way 100 

IX Spring 117 

X Results ■ 133 

XI A Great Day 149 

XII New Ventures 164 

XIII Getting Together 179 

XIV Finding Ourselves 194 

XV The Goose Hangs High 208 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



CHAPTER I 

A NEW BEGINNING 

The first thing I did when I was fairly on 
my feet was to buy a farm. 

It was a matter of sentiment with me. All 
my family with the exception of my father had 
been farmers and even he, in his latter years, 
had talked wistfully of the independence of 
country life. His father had owned a fairly 
prosperous farm in New Hampshire and on 
his few acres had lived and died. He had 
raised there wheat for his flour, wool for his 
clothing, hides for his shoes, cream for his 
butter, and meat and vegetables for his table. 
He even made a fairly good imitation tea 
and coffee and sweetened the drink with ma- 
ple sugar from his own trees. Grandfather 
Carleton, according to father, could have built 
a Chinese wall about his fields and lived within 

I 



2 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

its boundaries, asking favor of no man. I 
suppose it was the feeling of independence 
coming of this that made such men as he good 
Americans; the first to shoulder muskets for 
their country, the first to shoulder axes and 
blaze a trail through the wilderness. 

Ruth's folks, too, had all been farmers. She 
herself was born and bred on a farm and I 
think it was that which gave her such good 
health and good courage. Though in the years 
of our struggle in the city I never heard her 
complain, I knew that always in her heart .she 
had a great yearning for the fields and open 
sky. She never spoke of this, but sometimes 
Ruth says a great deal when she doesn't speak. 
I know when I first told her of my plan she had 
to swallow hard to keep from crying. 

One thing alone disturbed Ruth and that was 
the thought that with success we were running 
away from our new-found friends. 

^'Somehow it seems as though we ought to 
stay right on here where we've made good and 
share our success with the others," she said. 

"You talk as though we'd made our fortune 
and were going back to the fatherland," I said. 

"I feel that way," she admitted. 

"Well," I said, "the gang is part of me now 



A NEW BEGINNING 3 

and I wouldn't quit if I were worth a million. 
But we're in a position where we can afford 
more elbow room now. Of course we can 
move back into the suburbs again, if we want 
to." 

She shuddered a little at that. 

**Not back there," she answered. 

*'Then the only other thing is a farm," I said. 
"And if you want, you can think of it as a farm 
for the whole gang. What a place it will be 
for the kiddies ; your own and the others !" 

That was all the cue Ruth needed. On the 
spot she hatched plans enough to keep her busy 
all her life. It looked to me as though we'd 
need a Carnegie endowment to carry out all 
her schemes, but I didn't say anything. I'd 
felt that way before about her projects and 
seen her end by putting them through on a 
few dollars. If Ruth had put into business 
the same amount of thought and brains and 
energy that .she put into her philanthropies she 
would have made a fortune. 

I went to a real estate dealer and there I 
received my first surprise. It wasn't my last 
however. Before I was through with this 
business I discovered that I had as much to 
learn as I had during those first years as an 



4 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

emigrant. And I may as well say right here 
that my experience wasn't the kind I've read 
about in the ''Simple Life" and "Back to the 
Farm'' stories. And because it was differ- 
ent is the reason Fm writing this. There's 
been just as much nonsense written about the 
farm as about the slums. One man makes it 
out a hell on earth and another man makes it 
out a paradise on earth, and both of them are 
wrong and both of them are right, but neither 
of them seems to me to have got at the heart 
of the matter. 

In "One Way Out" I learned to my own 
satisfaction that if an emigrant .succeeds where 
an American fails it proves there's something 
wrong with the American. And there is. 
True as you're living, there is. Something is 
lacking in him that his ancestors had; some- 
thing lacking that the emigrant has to-day. I 
thought that I had learned this once for all 
but when I got back into the country I had to 
learn it over again. The conditions were dif- 
ferent, but the same facts held good. 

I received a surprise, I said, at the very 
beginning. It came when the real estate man 
handed me a list of almost a hundred places for 
rent and for sale — all within easy reach of the 



A NEW BEGINNING 5 

city. I had my choice of anything from one 
acre to a hundred acres. Not only this but 
they were offered me almost at my own figure 
and my own terms. I found I could buy a 
farm as easily as a set of books. I don't think 
the agents would have refused a dollar down 
and a dollar a week. 

I didn't know anything about real estate 
values then, but judging from the prices sub- 
urban property was bringing I had an idea 
that a fairly decent place with buildings would 
cost me around ten thousand dollars. I found 
that for this sum I could get a fourteen room 
Colonial house with land enough for a park. 
After living where the same amount of land 
would almost make a ward, I was staggered. 
I thought there must be something crooked in 
the proposition. But I went to the other agen- 
cies and found the same bargains open to me. 
It seemed that farms were a drug on the 
market. 

And this was in a section of the country 
which had been .settled for over two hundred 
and fifty years! There's something to think 
about in that. It was within a ten cent car fare 
of a region which was absorbing emigrants by 
the hundred thousand. It was on the very 



6 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

outskirts of a city which was howHng about 
congestion and moaning over the high cost of 
Hving. Land was actually lying idle almost 
within .sight of a market pleading for more pro- 
duce. It certainly looked queer. 

These facts however didn't concern me at 
the time. As soon as I made sure the facts 
were actually as represented, I set about mak- 
ing a selection. To Ruth and me this was like 
living our honeymoon all over again. Perhaps 
it was more like living our youth again, for we 
hadn't ever passed our honeymoon. I'd go 
over the lists with her in the evening and we'd 
check off the places that sounded good to us, 
and then on the first fair morning we'd start 
to hunt them up. She'd leave the baby at home 
with some of our good neighbors and we'd go 
as far as we could on the electric cars and then 
walk. I wanted to have a carriage but she 
wouldn't hear of it because she wanted to feel 
free. Some days she pretended we were gyp- 
sies and other days that we were two Indians 
hunting a spot to camp. I didn't mind, because 
Dick was looking after most of the business 
now so I could take my time without worrying 
about that. In this way we squandered whole 
days along the country roads going through 



A NEW BEGINNING 7 

one old house after another and eating our 
lunch by the side of a brook or in a bit of woods. 

I think there must have been something in 
our blood inherited from our ancestors, for we 
took to the open road as though we'd been 
born by its side. Oh, but those were good days 
— those days when we wandered about at our 
will in search of a home. It was June and the 
fields were full of flowers and the air full of 
birds. Ruth knew them every one and greeted 
them like old friends, pointing them out to me. 
I could tell a crow from a robin and a daisy 
from a buttercup, but that was about all, and 
yet to me also these wild things were like old 
friends. I had never missed them, but after 
the first day I knew I could never do without 
them again. It was just as I had felt about 
Ruth from the first time I saw her. 

I suppose too that the contrast with our nar- 
row quarters of the last few years had some- 
thing to do with our joy in the broader pros- 
pect. Not that we had ever felt crowded. We 
had in our tenement all the room we needed 
and our lives had been so full that we didn't 
notice our quarters anyway. Our lives were 
still full but with more leisure and less strain 
we wanted more than we needed. We were 



8 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

like pioneers — content at the start with a log 
cabin or even a tent, but with prosperity desir- 
ing larger and better quarters more as a mat- 
ter of comfort than necessity. We were now 
ready for a few of the luxuries of life but we 
recognized frankly the fact that our new in- 
clinations were luxuries. If success had been 
longer in coming than it was, we would have 
remained where we were in perfect content- 
ment. 

It was hard for us to decide on any of the 
many old houses we explored because to us they 
all looked attractive. The thing we both liked 
about them in spite of signs of decay was that 
they all seemed so firmly established. There 
was nothing flimsy about them. They looked 
as though they had become rooted in the soil 
like the big elms which grew before so many 
of them. It was as though the winds and the 
sun and the rain had tested them and found 
them honest. As Ruth said, in going into them 
you wouldn't feel as though you were begin- 
ning life again as you might in a brand new 
house, but were only starting where the last 
owner left off. 

After our experiences during the last few 
years we appreciated such details as those. 



A NEW BEGINNING 9 

There had been times in the emigrant days 
when way down deep in our hearts we had 
felt a httle bit Hke people without a country. 
We were pioneers and we gloried in that, but 
we were pioneers without a fatherland. We 
had no sunny Italy, no emerald isle, no gay 
France, not even a grim Russia to talk about 
over a pipe at the end of the day as our neigh- 
bors had. We had to go back a century or 
more to get home, and vivid as that past seemed 
at times it was distinctly a past in which we 
had played no part. Now out here in the coun- 
try where we saw stone walls built by our fore- 
fathers, where the land had been tilled by them, 
where trees planted by them were still grow- 
ing, where if not direct descendants of our 
own, descendants of the old stock still lived, 
we felt closer to that history. So we thought 
that if we went into one of the old houses built 
by our forefathers, it would bring us still nearer 
home. 

We spent almost a month this way, anxious 
to draw out the pleasure as long as possible. 

^T'll know our home as soon as I see it,'' said 
Ruth ; *'ril recognize it like an old friend.'' 

And .so she did. One day toward nightfall 
— when in the country all the world seems to 



lO NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

get mellow — we came upon a little story and 
a half house connected by a shed with a ram- 
shackly looking barn. It was half hidden be- 
hind trees and lilac bushes on the top of a 
knoll which sloped to a small lake some fifty 
rods distant. There wasn't another house 
within .sight of it — just woodland and pasture 
and fields. Standing there on the old granite 
doorstep, you wouldn't have believed there was 
a city within a long day's journey. 

We had the key and went inside. The rooms 
were low studded and the windows came down 
to within two feet of the floor. The ceilings 
were discolored and the paper was off in great 
patches where the roof had leaked. But in 
spite of this the place somehow was like home. 
Ruth took my arm with a tight squeeze and 
looked up at me. 

"This is it, Billy," she said. 

I wasn't so sure as she was until all excited 
she began to tell me what she was going to do. 
With the birds singing outside and the lazy 
sun streaming through the windows slantwise, 
she led me through every room, selecting her 
papers, making her changes, and placing her 
furniture. 

''We don't want a single new thing in this 



A NEW BEGINNING II 

house/^ she exclaimed. "We want to keep it 
just as it was and don't you see how it was?'' 

I hadn't ever lived in the country and so I 
didn't, but she made it so vivid to me before 
we left that evening that I felt as though I had 
been born here. 

"We must visit all the houses in the neigh- 
borhood and buy what furniture we can right 
here," she said. "Maybe there'll be an auc- 
tion. Country people are always selling off 
their old stuff so we must keep our eyes open." 

"I should think it would be a lot simpler to 
buy what we want in town and be done with it," 
I said. 

"But we don't want to be done with it, Billy," 
she answered. "We can't come slam bang 
into an old house like this. We must grow into 
it." 

She was so happy that I didn't say anything 
more. I knew that she was right, whatever 
I thought. I'd trust Ruth's instinct against 
my judgment any time. 

I found that I could secure some fifty acres 
around the house and this was what pleased 
me. The lot included woodland, pasture and 
field, but mostly pasture grown up to alders 
and scrub pine. But however poor the land 



12 NEW, LIVES FOR OLD 

was, it was land, and that was what I was 
hungry for. I wanted to look out the windows 
and see land and walk over it and feel it be- 
neath my feet, knowing I owned it. I wanted 
to feel that I had a certain section of these 
United States of America which belonged to 
me and my heirs forever and ever. To have 
this would seem like being taken into the 
firm. 

When I came to look up the deeds I felt this 
more keenly than ever. I was able to trace the 
title back to an old Indian grant, for it had 
been held in one family over two hundred years 
and had changed title only twice since then. 
This in itself . brought history mighty close. 

I bought the land and house for twenty-eight 
hundred dollars — the house being practically 
thrown in. Because it was lop-sided and old 
and in need of repair it had no market value 
whatever. A flimsily built modern bungalow 
would have brought more. And yet when 
I examined the timbers I found them of 
oak, handhewn, and sound as a nut. The 
under-pinning was made of great granite slabs 
and was as good as the day it was put in, 
though it had worked askew from the frost. 
Even the floors, though uneven and needing 



A NEW BEGINNING 13 

propping, were sound. The roof boards and 
shingles had of course rotted, but here again 
the timbers supporting them had with time 
only become seasoned. When our great 
grandfathers built houses they didn't build for 
decades but for centuries. They didn't reckon 
the cost of the lumber. In a cottage they used 
beams big enough to support a church, matched 
them true and fastened them with hand-made 
spikes a foot long. I couldn't have bought the 
lumber alone for what I paid for the house. 
I couldn't have bought it anyway. You can't 
buy such timber as that any more. 

I started work upon it at once, because we 
wanted to get in as soon as possible. From the 
moment I paid the first installment — I bought it 
on time as a matter of convenience — we felt 
this to be our home. I couldn't spare any of 
my own men just then and felt anyway that 
as far as possible I ought to use local labor, so 
after considerable effort I rounded up three men 
to help me. 

I came to know these fellows better later 
on, but at the start they were almost as foreign 
to me as though they had come from another 
country. One of them was a man of fifty, an- 
other a man of forty and the third was a 



14 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



young chap not more than twenty-two or 
three. I'll call the oldest one Hadley — though 
that wasn't his name. The last name doesn't 
count for much anyway, because at the end of 
the week I was calling him Jim and he was 
calling me Bill. In less than two weeks the 
children who used to come over to watch us 
were calling me Bill. 

Seth Sprague and Josh Chase will do as 
names for the other two and come pretty close 
to what their names really were. Josh was the 
young fellow — a tall, bony lad with shoulders 
already well rounded, and in many other ways 
looking as old as Seth who might have been his 
father. 

All three of them had been born in the neigh- 
borhood and had lived here ever since. All 
three of them came from old New England 
stock and had inherited small farms from their 
fathers. And I must say that their personal 
appearance was no great credit to that stock. 
This impressed me right off. Not only were 
their bodies undersized and spare but their 
faces were thin and sallow. They didn't look 
healthy. They didn't look as healthy as the 
average emigrant. And yet they had been liv- 
ing in the country all their lives with out-of- 



A NEW BEGINNING 15 

door work in this fine air for a tonic and with 
country food to nourish them. They didn't 
look dissipated — just scrawny and underfed. 
If I had met one of them in the slums I would 
have said he was a case for the associated 
charities. I doubt if Seth could have got past 
the emigration officials. The first time they 
opened their dinner pails however I saw that 
I had missed my guess about their being 
starved. I never saw any three human beings 
get outside of as much food as they did. Three 
or four eggs, half a loaf of bread, a big slab 
of pie and two or three doughnuts to a pail, 
was their average lunch. They saw my sur- 
prise and Jim told a story fixing it on Seth, 
though I suspect it was an old one round the 
neighborhood. 

He said that Seth happened into the gro- 
cery one day just after a drummer had opened 
a large tin of canned beef. The drummer took 
off a slice which he ate with some crackers, 
and then shoved the can along to Seth with the 
invitation to join him. Seth took out his pocket 
knife and began. He finished that pound can 
with the rest of the crackers and allowing that 
this sort of whetted his appetite ordered a sec- 
ond can. When he finished this the drummer 



l6 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

who had been watching in amazement said, 
''Don't quit now; have another." Seth re- 
pHed that he didn't mind if he did and ate 
the contents of the third can. Then closing 
his knife and running the back of his hand 
across his mouth, he gave a sigh of satisfac- 
tion. "My," he said, ''but that was a juicy 
morsel." 

This started a yarn from Seth and he fixed 
his on Jim. They were full of these stories 
and would stop work a dozen times a day to 
drawl them out. Seth said that a man who 
lived on the edge of the town had a wife who 
was a mighty good cook. One spring she 
planned to go away for a week and visit .some 
relatives but before going she cooked up enough 
food to last her husband a week. He was a 
hearty eater, so she spent three or four days 
at the task. When it came time for supper, 
the first day she left, the man felt so lonesome 
that he went out of the house and looked for 
someone to join him. He met Jim and asked 
him in. Jim said that he had just had supper 
and wasn't feeling particularly hungry, but that 
he would join in a cup of tea just to be sociable. 
He sat down at the table and ate up a two 
quart pot of beans and the man brought on a 



A NEW BEGINNING 17 

second pot. Jim ate that too. Then the man 
brought out a pie and Jim ate that. A second 
one followed, and to cut a long story short, 
Jim before he finished ate up every single thing 
there was in the house. His host didn't say 
anything until Jim rose from the table. 
* Well," said his host, "Fni glad you didn t come 
along when you were hungry." 

I had more trouble handling those three men 
than IVe ever had with a gang of a hundred 
foreign laborers. They didn't know enough to 
do the work properly by themselves and they 
knew too much to obey orders. When it came 
to straightening up the underpinning I let them 
go ahead for a while on their own responsibil- 
ity. This was a simple task which three men 
with crow bars ought to have done in half a 
day. At the end of the first half day they had 
succeeded in harmonizing their various opin- 
ions as to how it ought to be done to the point 
where they determined they needed a jack 
screw. One of them went off to borrow this 
and when he returned it was lunch time. Then 
I took hold and it was only by doing most of 
the work myself that we finished this job in two 
days. I used them to help only where I needed 
more muscle and at that the three together 



1 8 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

couldn't lift as much as one of my .stocky, close- 
knit Italian laborers. 

I found it impossible either to lead or drive 
them. My attempts resulted in nothing but 
longwinded arguments or sulky threats of leav- 
ing. And I was paying them a dollar and 
seventy-five cents a day for unskilled labor. 
They were both lazy and incompetent. That's 
the frank truth. 

I kept them along until the fourth day, which 
was cloudy with at times a light drizzling rain. 
I had got up at four o'clock in order to be at 
the house on time, for I was anxious to get this 
outside work done as soon as possible. At 
seven o'clock not one of the men had put in an 
appearance. I waited until half past eight and 
then went off to see what the trouble was. I 
found Seth at home smoking a pipe by the side 
of the kitchen stove. His wife was a pleasant 
faced woman and the inside of the house was 
as neat as wax — in marked contrast to the clut- 
ter around the outside. 

"What's the trouble?" I asked. 

"Dunno of any trouble," he answered as 
though surprised by my question. 

"I've been down to the house over an hour 
waiting for you," I said. 



A NEW BEGINNING 19 

"What for?'^ he asked. 

"Aren't you going to work any more?'' 

"Don't expect a man to work in the rain, do 
you ?" he answered. 

"I guess it's too much to expect work of you 
in any sort of weather," I said. 

I paid him for his four days and left him 
growHng uncomphmentary remarks about me 
to his wife. I received the same reply from 
Jim. I paid him off too and went on in search 
of young Chase. I thought the boy and I to- 
gether might be able to clear up some of the odd 
jobs. He wasn't at home. His mother 
thought he might be at the grocery store. I 
went down there and found him lolling against 
the counter. 

"You aren't afraid of rain too, are you?" I 
demanded. There were three other men there 
and he looked ashamed. 

"It's my rheumatiz," he answered, feeling of 
his leg. "It's a botherin' me a powerful lot to- 
day." 

"Then you refuse to come to work?" 

"I'd like to accommodate ye," he answered. 
"But honest—" 

"I don't want you to accommodate me," I 
said. "I want you to work for me." 



20 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

He straightened up a little at this and an- 
swered back. '^I won't work in the rain for no 
man." 

He glanced toward the others and I saw them 
nod their approval. This stand was more than 
I had expected of him. It showed that he had 
some spirit of a certain kind after all. 

"All right/' I said. "Here's your money." 

When I was leaving, he roused himself once 
more. "I reckon what you want mister ain't a 
man — it's a Dago." 

"You're partly right," I said; "I reckon what 
I want is a Dago." 



CHAPTER II 

MY NEIGHBORS 

This was my first introduction to the old- 
stock farmer of whom I was to learn much more 
later on. Of course in a real sense these men 
were not farmers, and yet they were farmers 
or nothing. They had been born on a farm, 
had spent their lives there, and still depended 
upon the land for whatever means of livelihood 
they had. They were willing to work out as 
a matter of accommodation or to pick up an 
extra dollar or so, but they certainly did not 
class themselves as laborers. I could agree 
with them in that, but neither to my mind were 
they real farmers; not as I conceived farmers 
to be from what my father had told me and 
from what I read in the magazines. 

I don't suppose my ideal differed much from 
that of the average city bred man who has never 
had the good fortune to spend even his vaca- 
tion in the country. Perhaps I was a little 
more visionary about them than some, because 

21 



22 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

my life in the foreign quarter had roused my 
patriotism and driven me back into history for 
comfort. From that source I had created in 
my mind as representative a tall, gaunt indi- 
vidual of the Lincoln type with all Lincoln's 
ruggedness of body and brain. I pictured him 
as honest to his very soul, as industrious to an 
extreme, as shrewd and thrifty, as brave and 
long .suffering. So I still believe the old New 
Englander to have been ; so I believe many of 
them are to-day. Perhaps I was unfortunate 
in finding at the very start three who did not 
live up to my standard, but I want to put down 
my experiences just as they came to me. If 
there were no more like these in the length and 
breadth of the whole land, here at least were 
three. And they were of the genuine old stock, 
uncontaminated by a single drop of new blood. 

I received from people who read "One Way 
Out'' much criticism to the effect that the ex- 
periences which befell me were not typical ; that 
the conditions which I encountered would not 
hold in other places. Perhaps that is true. I 
don't know. As I tried to make clear before, 
I'm not an investigator, nor a sociologist, nor 
a writer of tracts. I don't claim to know any 



MY NEIGHBORS 



23 



more than I have seen with my own eyes — 
than I have actually lived through. But I still 
believe that conditions, whatever they are, don't 
matter if a man tackles them in the right spirit. 
I believe that, because I see every day men 
starting even and one failing and one succeed- 



ing. 



What I said in "One Way Out" I want to 
repeat here : I'm authority on nothing but my- 
self. Just as Ruth and I, driven on by cir- 
cumstances, went adventuring in the slums, so 
driven on by other if not such urgent circum- 
stances we went adventuring in the country. 
And I approached my new and later life in a 
state of just as much absolute ignorance as I 
did the first. It was chance that led me to 
locate where I did, it was chance which fur- 
nished me with my neighbors; it was chance 
which furnished me with my opportunity. If 
this led me into an unexplored country and 
along paths never before trod by man, I thank 
my lucky stars. I don't believe it, but I'm will- 
ing to let it go at that. I'm not much on argu- 
ment. 

This then is a plain statement of what I saw 
with my new eyes — the eyes of an immigrant 
into the country. It is a plain statement of what 



24 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

I did and what I learned and the people I met. 
I don't claim that it's either typical or impor- 
tant. The life of one man isn't apt to be. Here 
it is, however, without any further explanation 
or apology, for what it's worth, and if anyone 
gets as much fun out of reading it as I have had 
in living it, I won't consider I've wasted my 
time in writing it. 

I proceeded to act at once on Seth's idea. I 
remembered having seen, back on the road, a 
little place which at the time I had thought 
looked like the home of some foreign-born pio- 
neer. It bore all the earmarks; it was an un- 
kempt but busy looking place. There were evi- 
dences of many children and a consequent clut- 
ter of tin cans, broken bottles and old shoes, but 
I saw no farming tools and broken down wag- 
ons in the yard. These things were all under 
cover in the shed. I noticed too that the yard 
was full of chickens and that every square foot 
of land around the house was being tilled. 
When I knocked at the door a woman ap- 
peared with a child in her arms and with half 
a dozen more clinging to her skirts. She was 
a red-cheeked, black-eyed woman, as plump and 
happy looking as you would ask to see. Some- 
how I felt instantly at home here. I surprised 



MY NEIGHBORS 25 

her by asking in Italian where her man was, 
and she answered that he was out back of the 
barn and bade one of the boys to run and fetch 
him for the signor. I said no, that I would go 
and find him myself. She protested that the 
.signor would get wet and that he had better 
come in and wait. I felt half ashamed that she 
should class me with that sort of coddled signor 
and hurried off to find Tony. 

I found him in an old hat and gray sweater, 
up to his knees in the black soil. He was a 
swarthy, well-muscled chap, with a face tanned 
to the color of sole leather. He looked like a 
villain of melodrama, but as I approached he 
smiled a greeting which revealed teeth as nat- 
urally white as a hound's. A couple of mon- 
grel pups were nosing at his heels and ran at 
me ferociously, but stopped half way and 
wagged their tails. With an oath in Italian he 
ordered them back and belly to the ground they 
obeyed him. 

I introduced myself and he recognized my 
name at once for the fame of Carleton's gang 
had by now spread far. 

'T have two cousins working for you,'' he 
said in a manner that made me feel it a compli- 
ment. 



26 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

He told me their names and I remembered 
them well. They were good workmen. 

"I've bought a house near you/' I said. "I 
need a man or two to help me. Do you want a 
job?" 

*^Ah, .signor," he replied with a shake of his 
head in apology, "if I did not have so much to 
do here." 

He waved his hand over the scant two acres 
of land back of him as though it were a princi- 
pality. 

"This is all yours ?" I asked. 

"Yes," he answered proudly. "This — the 
house — everything." 

"You are doing well then." 

"Well enough," he answered with a shrug 
of his shoulders and a smile. 

"Then I can't hire you?" 

"It would be impossible, signor," he an- 
swered, as though some apology were due me. 
"The planting is not yet done. And — ^by the 
good Christ — there are a thousand things to do 
on an estate." 

It was good to hear the way he pronounced 
that word estate. There was enough dignity 
in it to make it seem in .sober earnest like an 
estate. 



MY NEIGHBORS 27 

"Do you know of anyone I can get ?" I asked. 

"There is Signor Chase," he began. 

But I shut him off. "Any of your country- 
men, I mean." 

"There is Dardoni; he might have a man. 
But no — not in the spring. There are my 
wife's cousins. They have just come over. I 
could send — " 

"No," I interrupted, "I can get men enough 
in the city." 

"I beheve you, signor," he answered with a 
bow. 

I started to leave when rather hesitatingly he 
asked if I wouldn't be good enough to step into 
the house and have a glass of wine with him. 
He had so interested me and what he said had 
so whetted my curiosity that I gladly accepted. 
He preceded me to the house and at the door 
called loudly for Maria. She came with her 
cheeks redder than ever and with the children 
clinging about her skirts, ushered us into the 
living room. There was no such neatness here 
as I had seen in the Sprague house. All was 
confusion ; a mixture of sewing and play things 
and garlic-flavored cooking. What can one do 
with six children to feed and clothe? Maria 
made no apologies. This was home and home 



28 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

to her was a plant for the rearing of children. 
We seated ourselves at a bare wooden table and 
she brought out a bottle of red wine as light 
as new cider. I drank good health to Maria 
and success to Tony. 

I asked him many questions out of honest in- 
terest and he answered me frankly and with ea- 
gerness as your true pioneer ever does because 
of pride in his accomplishments. He told me 
that he had come here three years ago to work 
for Dardoni who had a grand estate — ten times 
as large as his — on the other side of the town. 
He had saved a little money before he came 
and with that, and what he earned later, he 
had bought these few acres of his own. Since 
then he had earned his living and something 
over. The thing that impressed me at the time, 
but the full significance of which I did not real- 
ize until later, was that he found a market for 
his eggs and produce right here in the village. 
Some of it he exchanged at the store for gro- 
ceries but much of it he sold from door to door. 
It sounded like carrying coals to Newcastle. 

I passed a pleasant hour with Tony and then 
went back to my house where I puttered around 
the rest of the day doing odd jobs. When I 
came home that night and told my experiences 



MY NEIGHBORS 29 

to Ruth she only laughed to herself and made 
no comment. I told her I was going to take 
four or five of my own men out there next day 
and she said she guessed I would save time that 
way. 

From that point on, the work went along 
swimmingly. After getting all the buildings 
straightened up I brought down a couple of 
carpenters to do the shingling. At different 
times Seth and Jim and Josh came along to 
watch proceedings. They bore no ill will and 
offered me plenty of advice. At first I resented 
this, but after a while I learned not to mind. I 
couldn't help liking the men after a fashion and 
I enjoyed their stories. They took as paternal 
an interest in my affairs as though I were a 
tenant and they were landlords. They were 
like children in the intiinate questions they 
asked, but I found that they were not at all dis- 
turbed if they received no replies. 

After the shingling I began on the plastering. 
I knocked down the old plastering in every room 
and found that the lathing was all of the old 
split-board kind. This really made a stronger 
and firmer background than the modern lath- 
ing. I made another find ; two fireplaces which 
had been bricked up to accommodate air-tight 



30 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

stoves. I was mighty well pleased with this 
because I'm fond of fireplaces and had won- 
dered how I was going to build one without 
tearing the house half to pieces. 

The next thing we did was to putty up the 
holes and cracks and paint every speck of wood 
inside and out a dead white. Ruth insisted on 
white. 

^'Somehow I wouldn't feel I was living in the 
country if my house wasn't white/' she said. 

I agreed with her, for to my mind there's no 
color so fresh and bright looking. And the 
very first coat brought the old house to life. 
It's wonderful what paint will do. It didn't 
make the house look new in the sense of making 
it appear like a house of to-day, but rather car- 
ried it back to its youth. It was like making an 
old man young again. We could hardly wait 
for the paint to dry before starting the second 
coat, and that carried us back another twenty- 
five years. Even Seth, who at the start had 
allowed that the old shack wasn't worth repair- 
ing, admitted now that it began to look real 
nifty. 

And the inside looked as fine as the outside. 
When we began, the woodwork was discolored 
both by age and dirt. This made the whole in- 



MY NEIGHBORS 31 

terior look worse than a cheap tenement. 
Twenty dollars' worth of white lead and oil 
changed this as though by magic into a clean 
white, as fresh as when the house was first built. 
There is nothing which shows age more than 
paint and there's nothing so easily remedied. 
If the owners had done what I had already done 
they would have made almost three hundred 
per cent, interest on their investment. In 
three weeks, at a cost of four hundred dollars, 
I had added fifteen hundred in value to the 
place. And it was a legitimate value. My 
paint hadn't covered up defects; it had simply 
brought out the honest worth of the structure. 
With the floors painted and the windows 
drawn, we were now ready for the personal de- 
tails which should make this house into a home. 
It was then that we had a great stroke of luck 
in hearing of an auction in another village some 
eight miles away and off the main road. Seth 
told us about it and said if I was looking for 
old trash he reckoned I could find enough of it 
there. He said he wouldn't give a quarter for 
the whole lot, which didn't sound very encour- 
aging. But Ruth said she had heard them talk 
like that before, and anyway it would be good 
fun to go. 



32 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



One clear summer morning then we rose 
early and Ruth put up a lunch and we boarded 
the train. The nearest station was five miles 
away and there we hired an old white horse and 
a buggy. We jogged along over the country 
roads at a three-mile-an-hour clip and reached 
the place just before the auction started at ten 
o'clock. We found some thirty or forty na- 
tives there. Most of them had come just to 
look on. They always had time for that. Even 
in the busiest season it was as easy to gather a 
crowd in these out-of-the-way places as it is 
during the noon hour on Broadway. And 
they wouldn't come for an hour, but for all day. 

We found rather a romantic story in connec- 
tion with this auction. The story ran, and I 
guess it was true, that the man who had been 
living here as a bachelor for forty years had or- 
iginally built and furnished this house for his 
bride. Just before they were to be married she 
had died and he had moved into the house and 
lived here by himself until his own death. 

When Ruth heard that, she said to me, 
*'Billy, do you loiow I think he'd be glad for us 
to have his things." 

"I don't know how he'd feel about me, but I'm 



MY NEIGHBORS 33 

dead sure he'd be glad for you to have them," I 
said. 

"He wouldn't if it wasn't for you/' she an- 
swered, with a smile. 

I'm not saying she was right in this deduc- 
tion but I made up my mind she'd have what- 
ever she liked at that auction if it broke me. 

There's a lot in luck at auctions — for the 
buyer. And we were certainly in luck that 
day. There were no stray automobile parties 
in the group to boost things up for the fun of 
it, and no professional furniture buyers. It 
was a real country auction with a country 
auctioneer and a country crowd. Seth and 
Jim and Josh were there and the rest of the 
group was all of their kind. Both the men 
and the women looked bloodless and withered. 
It showed in their faded eyes, in their sallow 
cheeks, in their spare bodies. They seemed old 
and tired — even the young women. And the 
.strange thing about it was that to me they 
looked like foreigners. I felt as though I had 
come into some distant country among a new 
people. I couldn't seem to connect them with 
America; even with the America of history. 
It took an effort on my part to remember that 



34 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

the names they bore were the names borne by 
many of those who settled in Plymouth. 

I asked Ruth if she felt that way and after 
thinking a moment she answered, ''Not as much 
as you do/' 

Still I .saw she knew there was something 
wrong with them because she kept looking at 
the women with almost a sad expression. 
Once, she said, "There's something to do here, 
Billy." 

"Missionary work?" I asked. 

She nodded. 

"But this isn't Africa," I laughed. "This 
i,s the United States of America. It's a fact 
and we mustn't forget it." 

"No," she said, "that is just what we must 
remember." 

"And most of these people are descendants 
of the Mayflower. They are relatives of 
ours." 

"Yes," she said soberly, "we must remember 
that, too." 

But the auctioneer was begging our kind at- 
tention to examine a collection of extremely 
useful articles which he announced he was go- 
ing to include in a single parcel. Into an old 
tin pan he counted one by one a rusty tgg 



MY NEIGHBORS 35 

beater, two iron spoons, a kitchen knife, three 
glass preserve jars, a doughnut cutter, a 
crockery door knob and finally a dozen ordi- 
nary tin coffee cans. Then with his hands on 
his hips he stood back and beamed with pride 
upon the collection. 

^'How much for the lot !" he demanded. 

He himself looked like one of the odds and 
ends he was selling. Though not over thirty- 
five he was round shouldered and dyspeptic. 
He wore glasses and though smooth shaven 
his beard still showed. His clothes hung 
loosely about his spare frame and he seemed to 
be always in pain. 

The bids started at two cents and quickly 
went to five, while the crowd laughed good na- 
turedly. 

I gained a better impression of the auction- 
eer right off by the earnest, sober way he went 
at his business. He had a trick of leaning 
over the crowd with his long bony finger 
outstretched and calling earnestly, "Once, 
twice — " with a little pause there which made 
you feel as though you were missing a great 
opportunity. 

''Twice," he repeated, and in the excitement 
of the moment I was on the point of bidding 



36 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

six when he brought both hands together with 
the decisiveness of a decree of Fate and I es- 
caped. 

Ruth had detected my temptation and pulled 
at mv sleeve. 

*'Look here, Billy," she warned, "you 
mustn't bid on anything except what we really 
want.'' 

* 'Think of all those things going for five 
cents," I answered. 

''And when the man gets home with them 
he'll wonder why he ever bid two," she said. 

The auctioneer disposed of the culch first 
and always found a bidder if only for a worth- 
less basket filled with broken bottles. And 
there wasn't a man who bought those things 
who didn't have his wood shed cluttered up 
with similar waste. 

Finally he came to six wooden kitchen 
chairs. They were painted yellow and had 
seats three inches thick. They were hand 
made and fastened together with wooden pegs 
instead of nails and were as stout as when first 
built. Ruth had picked these out at once. 

'T'd better start them at a quarter," I said. 

"No," she whispered, "you keep quiet. Let 
me do the bidding." 



MY NEIGHBORS 37 

''How much a piece for the lot?'' inquired 
the auctioneer. 

The man who had the adjoining farm started 
them at two cents. 

"Why you'd pay more than that for kindhng 
wood," exclaimed the auctioneer. ''But two 
Tm offered. Will anyone make it three?" 

I nudged Ruth but she didn't open her 
mouth. 

"Three," called someone. 

"Three I'm offered, who'll make it four?" 

No one answered. 

"Three I'm offered, once, — " 

I nudged Ruth again but she remained as 
though dumb. I was standing on tiptoe. 

"Three I'm offered; twice. Going, go- 
ing—" 

I was all out of breath when Ruth spoke up 
as cool as you please, "Four." 

"Four I'm offered." 

He extended his finger towards the first bid- 
der. 

"Now make it five," the auctioneer coaxed. 

The man shook his head. 

"Make it a half." 

Again the man shook his head. 
'I'm offered four cents a piece for these fine 



iijK 



38 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

hardwood chairs. Make it a half. Make it 
a quarter. Going — going — '' 

He paused again with an eager tantaHzing 
smile. Then he brought his hands together. 

"And sold to Mr.—" 

"Carleton," I answered quickly. 

"Oh," gasped Ruth. "They are ours!" 

We bought another lot of eight at twelve 
cents a piece. We bought a third lot, cane 
seated and painted a handsome black, for nine 
cents. Besides this we bought a mahogany 
veneered bureau with old brass handles, in per- 
fect condition, for four dollars and a quarter. 
I learned later that it was worth at least twenty- 
five dollars. We bought a grandfather's 
clock with pine case and wooden works, made 
in Winchester, England, for thirteen dollars 
and a half. We bought a solid mahogany 
four-poster bed for twenty-two dollars. We 
bought a hardwood kitchen table for two dol- 
lars. We bought three feather beds at a dol- 
lar and a half a piece — the goose feathers alone 
in each being worth five or six dollars. We 
bought a set of black and white ware con- 
sisting of a tea pot, sugar bowl, milk pitcher, 
and nine cups and saucers, in perfect condition, 
for five dollars — less than you'd pay for or- 



MY NEIGHBORS 



39 



dinary crockery. We bought a mahogany 
veneered kitchen clock for two dollars. We 
bought a bird's eye maple, rope bed for four 
dollars. In addition to this we bought beauti- 
ful old bed spreads and rag rugs and mirrors 
— all for a song. In fact, we took about every- 
thing in the house that was of any value and 
paid less than ten cents on a dollar for what 
it was worth merely as furniture, and less than 
two cents for what most of it should have 
brought as antiques. 

I accomplished two things that day; I fur- 
nished my house for a song and I introduced 
myself to my future neighbors, for my reckless 
buying became the gossip of the neighborhood. 



CHAPTER III 

COLD FACTS 

It was the middle of August when we 
moved into our new home, and on the second 
Saturday following we gave a house warming. 
When we left our tenement we told our friends 
that instead of saying good-by to them there 
we meant to say howdy at the new home. And 
so this party was principally for them, although 
through the local paper we sent out a general 
invitation to everyone in the neighborhood. 

We swept up the barn floor and set a long 
table there, improvised out of boards and saw 
horses. Ruth decorated it with green and 
with wild flowers. We served cold meats, 
bread and butter, ice cream and cake, coffee 
and milk, to some seventy-five grown-ups and 
Lord knows how many children. The latter 
made the whole country-side spring to life as 
though by magic. If a happier, more en- 
thusiastic group than our former neighbors 
ever gathered together under one roof I'd like 

40 



COLD FACTS 41 

to see them. Ruth, Dick, and myself acted as 
waiters, with plenty of assistance from every- 
one, and saw to it that all had as much as they 
could eat. 

The village people came more out of curi- 
osity than anything else, I imagine. Ed Bar- 
clay, the auctioneer, was there and I liked 
him even better than at first on further ac- 
quaintance. Seth, Josh and Jim turned up in 
spite of their aversion to Dagoes. Then the 
Reverend Percy Cunningham, pastor of the 
Methodist Church, came with his wife. He 
was a slight, very serious man, dressed in black 
like an undertaker. Deacon Weston, said to 
be the richest man in town, also dropped in for 
a minute and bade me welcome. He had a 
thin, hard face that hinted as to how he had 
acquired his wealth, and later I found out that 
my guess was sound. Horatio Moulton, w^ho 
kept the village store, was another who stopped 
to shake hands. 

But the fellow out of the whole lot who in- 
terested me most was Guiseppe Dardoni, the 
landed proprietor of whom Tony had spoken 
to me. In spite of the fact that financially he 
was one of the strongest men in town he was 
never called anything but Joe — not so much 



42 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

in a spirit of good fellowship as with the easy 
familiarity people speak to a Chinaman or a 
no-account Indian. He never resented the 
slight openly, but I had long since learned that 
these people appreciate being given the dignity 
of their full name. 

Signor Dardoni was a man of forty-five, I 
should judge. He was slight and wiry of 
build, with a kindly face and smiling eyes. 
His hair was turning gray and he was 
extremely courteous and gentle mannered. 
Neither in dress nor speech did he betray the 
fact that he was any more prosperous than 
most of his fellow citizens. I noticed however 
that he drove up with his daughter behind a 
very good horse and in a well-kept sulky. He 
greeted everyone with a good-natured smile, 
and Seth who happened to be standing near in- 
troduced us. 

''Joe,'' he said, ''let me make ye 'quainted 
with Bill Carleton who's figgerin' on settlin' 
here." 

"I've heard much of you," I said to him, 
speaking in Italian, to Seth's disgust. 

"And I have heard much of Signor Carleton. 
But you have traveled in Italy?" he asked. 

"Yes," I answered, "in Little Italy." 



COLD FACTS 43 

He laughed at that and I took him to meet 
Ruth. Later we adjourned into the house 
where, over a bottle of smuggled Italian wine, 
which one of the boys had given me, I learned 
more about him. We passed a pleasant half 
hour and when he left I told him that I wanted 
to come over and visit him. 

''I want to see how you manage your farm,'' 
I said. 

"I shall be honored,'' he said with the sin- 
cere but exaggerated politeness of his race. 
''But it is not much, just a few acres." 

It was not until midnight that the last of 
our guests left, for Pelletti, who had brought 
along his fiddle, furnished music for a dance. 
It would have done your heart good to watch 
those people dance — especially the girls. The 
fiddle seemed to become part of them. Before 
we knew it Ruth and I were on the floor and 
Dick had seized Lucia, Dardoni's oldest 
daughter, and followed at our heels. 

It was right after this that I began to plan 
the development of my farm. It was of course 
much too late in the season for me to attempt 
to plant anything. However there were many 
other things about the place that needed atten- 
tion. I hired Hadley by the month to help 



44 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

me and started in at once clearing up gener- 
ally. I had him repair the walls and fences, 
cut bushes, trim the trees, and do the chores 
around the house. I bought a cow for the sake 
of having our own milk for the kiddies, and so 
he also had her to look after. I paid him forty 
dollars a month and it was all he was worth. 
Dick and I used to do as much every Saturday 
afternoon as he did through the week. 

I made one other investment this season; I 
bought a second hand automobile. This made 
me independent of trains and allowed me many 
an odd hour at home which otherwise I would 
have lost. I could make the run from my office 
to the house in thirty-five minutes, but the 
thing cost me first and last a good deal of 
money. It didn't take me a month to learn 
that anyone who figures on saving car fare 
with one of them makes a mistake. However, 
I figured that we would save enough in other 
ways to make up for this added expense. 
Here again I soon learned I was mistaken, and 
that brought me face to face with a new rev- 
elation which knocked sky high some of my 
preconceived notions. We found when we 
came to settle our first month's store bill that 
it was costing as much and in some cases more 



COLD FACTS 45 

for our food stuffs than it had cost in the city. 
When Ruth came to me with the bills and I 
looked them over I was astonished to find that 
the prices even for eggs and butter were those 
current in town ; that such staples as sugar and 
flour and lard were if anything a little higher 
and that for vegetables we were actually pay- 
ing more than we did at the city market when 
Ruth was doing her own marketing. 

"Well/' I said, "what do you make out of 
this?" 

"I don't understand about the butter and 
eggs/' she said, "but of course I don't have 
the chance here that I used to have to get cut 
prices on the other things." 

"I know," I said, "but these men don't have 
to pay high rents or an expensive staff of 
clerks. They don't even advertise. It looks 
to me as though our friend Moulton was tak- 
ing advantage of us. Probably he thinks we're 
city folks and don't care what we pay." 

This was in September and there wasn't an 
item on our bill that did not equal or exceed 
town prices for the best. Taking into account 
the fact that, as Ruth said, there were no bar- 
gain sales, it is easy to see that where we had 
looked for a reduction in living expenses we 



46 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

had really met with a substantial increase. 
Not only this, but in most cases the goods we 
received were inferior to those we secured in 
town. As for meats, the prices charged were 
exorbitant. 

Now neither Ruth nor I had reached, or ever 
will I trust, a point where we didn't care how 
much we were paying. The lesson of the 
ginger jar was too firmly implanted for us to 
accept without a question, as we did when we 
were living in the suburbs, whatever we might 
be charged. But aside from this I was gen- 
uinely interested in the economic side of the 
matter. I wanted to know how this condition 
of things happened to exist. It looked to me 
on the face of it as though there was something 
wrong in having to pay as much in the coun- 
try for butter, eggs, vegetables and poultry 
as we had to pay in the city. So I went down 
to the village and had an interview with my 
fat friend Moulton. He welcomed me cor- 
dially and listened to my questions with a 
smile. 

^Tm not kicking on your making a fair 
profit,'' I told him, ''but I simply can't figure 
out why it's necessary for you to charge so 
much in order to do it. If you can show me, 



COLD FACTS 47 

ril trade with you; if you can't I'm going to 
trade in town after this." 

'That's right," he nodded, '1 hear your kick 
every year from summer folks. They come up 
here to save money and go away sore because 
they don't." 

"But why don't they?" I demanded. 

'' 'Cause I have to make a profit in order to 
live," he answered. ''Now look a-here, I ain't 
so big a corporation that I have to hide my 
books to steer clear of an investigation from 
Congress. If you've got a spare hour I'll show 
you some things that city folks don't reckon 
on." 

And he did. I'll give him credit for making 
the whole business clear to me in less than an 
hour. He opened my eyes to a few facts that 
I've never seen mentioned in any fairy dreams 
about the simple life that I've ever read. And 
what is more they were cold facts that don't 
seem to get into even the heavier treatises on 
New England life. 

In the first place, he proved to me with his 
books, that he bought not only his staples from 
the city market, but even his produce. 

'T can't buy a pound of decent butter here," 
he said. "The farmer's butter you hear so 



48 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

much about isn't made any more; what little 
is made is loaded down with salt to a point 
where you couldn't pay 'em twenty cents a 
pound for it. I can't buy a decent chicken. 
All they bring in here are the old fowls that 
you couldn't cut up with a broad ax." 

''What do they do with their chickens?" I 
asked. 

"They don't raise many to start with." 

'Why not?" 

"Too lazy for one thing, and then they say 
they have to pay too much for corn." 

"Why don't they raise their own corn?" 

"Don't ask me," he answered. "The fact is 
they buy western corn for all their stock." 

"Won't corn grow here ?" 

"I reckon it would grow if they planted it," 
he answered. "Seems t' me I recollect some- 
thing about the Injuns growing it. But I 
guess that maybe the Injuns didn't have to 
plant theirs. Maybe it just growed. I s'pose 
it's hard work to plant corn and hoe it." 

He laughed to himself at a story this sug- 
gested. All these people had Lincoln's gift of 
pointing a fact with a story. 

"They tell about Josh Whiting who lived in 
that old house down to the lower end of the 



COLD FACTS 49 

village where Horatio Sampson lives now. 
Josh was so all-fired lazy that he wouldn't do 
no work at all and like to starved to death. 
So the neighbors after feeding him for a while 
allowed that so long as he waren't no good he 
might just as well be buried. A committee 
of 'em went down to his house one day and took 
him out and put him in a hearse and started for 
the graveyard. When they were nighing the 
gate a stranger came along and inquired what 
was up. They told him and it seemed to him 
like such hard lines that he offered to do some- 
thing. 

" T'll give the corpse a bag of corn anyhow/ 
says he. 

'' 'All right/ they says. 

*'So he went to the hearse and opened the 
door and looked in. 

" T can't see a man die for lack of food/ 
says he. 'So I'll give ye a bag of corn.' 

"Josh, he hitched up on one elbow to see who 
was speakin'. Ts it shelled?' says he. 

" 'No/ answered the fellow. 'But it won't 
be much trouble for you to shell it.' 

"Josh settled down on his back again with 
his hands crossed over his chest. 'Drive on/ 
he says." 



50 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

"Well/' I said, when I was through laugh- 
ing, 'Vho gets what chickens they do raise?" 

"Dardoni,'' he answered. "He buys them 
for cash and sends them to the wholesaler in 
town. When I want one I buy from the whole- 
saler." 

"What about eggs?" 

"Same thing. They bring in a few to swap 
for groceries. But look at 'em." 

He went to a basket and held up one about as 
large as a robin's egg. 

"That's the kind they bring in," he said. 
"An egg is an egg and I take them 'cause I can 
sell them back again. But when I want a de- 
cent egg I have to pay the market quotation 
for it. They all take the papers and they 
charge accordin' to what they read there." 

"But vegetables — " 

"They don't raise enough for themselves — 
except Dardoni and a few other Dagoes." 

"What do they raise?" I asked. 

"Damfino," he answered. "Measles mostly. 
Some rheumatiz and a fine crop of dyspeptsy. 
You want to know what I make more profit on 
than anything in my store ?" 

"What?" 

He pointed to three shelves loaded with pat- 



COLD FACTS 51 

ent medicine bottles. 'That stuff/' he said. 
"There's fifty per cent, profit in it and I can't 
keep nuff of it." 

''But good Lord, you wouldn't think that in 
the country — " 

*'They live on it," he answered ; "what it says 
on the bottles is pretty nigh true; 'Babies cry 
for it.' Only they oughter add onto that, 
'And parents die for it.' " 

He leaned over towards me and spoke in my 
ear. "It ain't nothin' but dope and whisky. 
The village is pretty nigh divided even on 
which they like best. I've got a bunch of old 
maids that get drunk reg'lar on it and don't 
know it. The meanest thing I do is to sell it to 
'em." 

"Why don't you cut it out?" I suggested. 

" 'Cause they'd go to the drug store and buy 
it there," he said. "If this was the only place 
in town where they could get it, I'd take an ax 
handle and smash every last bottle. That's 
honest. Howsomever, that ain't got anything 
to do with eggs, an' then again maybe it has. 
P'raps it's that stuff that makes them lazy." 

He turned to his books again. 

"You any idee how many of these folks I 
carry on credit ?" 



52 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

'Ten per cent.," I said for a guess. 

''Say seventy per cent, an' ye'll come nearer. 
Any idee how long I carry most of the ac- 
counts ?'' 

"Six months." 

"They'll average up two years. Any idee 
how much of that is bad?" 

"Five per cent.," I said with a laugh. 

"Say twenty per cent, and ye wouldn't come 
nigh enough even to hit the target." 

I was curious enough to examine his books 
carefully and I saw that every statement he 
made was true. I settled my bill without an- 
other word. 

"I don't see how you keep in business," I 
said. "You'll have my trade from now on 
even though I could do better buying in town. 
I've come out here to live and I believe in 
standing my tax, but I'll be hanged if I can 
see any reason why things should be this 
way." 

"After you've lived here a year, maybe you'll 



see." 



'Maybe I will," I said, "but I tell you right 
now that within that time I'll be raising most 
of my own stuff." 
He nodded. 



COLD FACTS 53 

"That's what they all say. But Td hate to 
pay you what that's goneter cost you." 

''What about Dardoni?" I asked. 

"Oh, he's a Dago," answered Moulton, as 
though that disposed of the question. 

Moulton's books had summed up conditions 
in this country town concretely and vividly. 
His ledger was a tract. Five years' residence 
couldn't have given me such a clear insight 
into the actual state of things as they existed 
here. But of course they furnished no ex- 
planation either of the apparent degeneracy of 
the natives or the success of the newcomers. 
The key to the latter I held myself, but the rev- 
elation of the condition of the former came to 
me as a shock. 

Think of it! Here almost within sight of 
one of the oldest and most prosperous cities in 
the East lay a village of three or four hundred 
Afnerican families, descendants of the best 
New England stock, in a condition of such stag- 
nation that they couldn't pay their store bills. 
Surrounded by land which had supported their 
ancestors, they were dependent upon the West 
for their food stuffs. Born and bred in the 
open air they were weak and lazy and sick. In 
ideal surroundings my own kith and kin were 



54 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

actually worse off than many of the penniless 
immigrants of the slums. 

What, in God's name, was the matter with 
them? I asked this of myself over and over 
again and that winter, as I learned still more 
about them, what had at first been merely an 
exclamation of surprise became a prayer. 
What, in God's name, was the matter with 
them ? 



CHAPTER IVi 

A TOWN ASLEEP 

During this first winter Ruth and I made 
the most of every opportunity to get acquainted 
with our fellow townsmen. We went to 
church regularly and attended all the sociables 
and concerts and fairs and we met some very 
fine people. But a large part of them however, 
were not so representative of the new gener- 
ation in whom I was most interested as they 
were of the old generation. I found that most 
of the comfortable and well-to-do were among 
those who had inherited small fortunes, where 
the accumulations of several branches of one 
family had finally settled in a single individual. 
Much of this money I also found had been 
made outside the village. Then of course 
there was another prosperous element consist- 
ing of a half dozen local business men who 
were doing well; the hardware merchant, the 
druggist, the grain and hay merchant, the 
local lawyers and doctors. I might have seen 

55 



56 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

more of these men if I had been a member of 
the fraternal organizations, but somehow I 
never took to them. I found that there were a 
half dozen branches of various secret societies 
in this small village and a good many men be- 
longed to them all. 

Another significant fact was that I didn't 
meet at any of these gatherings any of my for- 
eign-born friends. I never saw Dardoni 
there, or Tony or any of the other dozen fam- 
ilies who as far as enterprise and worldly suc- 
cess go were important members of the com- 
munity. One reason was their difference in 
religious belief, but another and stronger was 
the fact that they were held to be on an in- 
ferior social plane. Li many ways they were. 
There's no denying this, but they had, to my 
mind, enough sterling qualities to offset that. 
Anyway, I hadn't looked to find social lines 
drawn in a country village, but when I ex- 
pressed my views even to Cunningham, the 
minister, I didn't receive much encouragement. 
It made me mad to see such snobbishness in an 
American village and several times I spoke 
from the shoulder. After I had visited Dar- 
doni' s farm I felt more strongly than ever. 
Signor Dardoni had some forty acres and 



A TOWN ASLEEP 57 

there wasn't a square foot which wasn't under 
cultivation. Ten of them were in an apple 
orchard — the only orchard in town that pro- 
duced commercially. He had taken native 
trees when they weren't more than half alive 
with their clutter of dead limbs, and trimmed 
them up, grafted them, and made them pay. 
That one accomplishment alone ought to have 
distinguished him in the village. It ought to 
have set an example if nothing else. And yet 
I found orchard after orchard going to waste 
and producing nothing but cider apples. Even 
these weren't picked, and Dardoni made an- 
other neat income every fall buying them on 
the trees for a song and turning them into new 
cider and vinegar. He had done this for five 
years and everyone knew that it paid and yet 
no one thought of following his example and 
making the same use of their own waste apples. 
That's a fair illustration of the difference in 
spirit between the two races. 

Another ten or fifteen acres he kept for hay, 
raising enough for his own use and sometimes 
enough to sell. On another strip he raised his 
own corn and wheat for fodder, being the only 
man in town who didn't spend his good money 
at the hay and grain store where corn went at 



58 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

times way over the dollar mark. Here again 
the natives had a working example before their 
very eyes and yet took no advantage of it. 

Another ten acres Dardoni devoted to 
garden truck for the near-by market, reaping 
every spring a handsome profit. There wasn't 
a native in the whole village who tried even to 
raise more than enough for himself and many 
didn't do that even when they had back door 
yards big enough to supply them for the year. 

The rest of his land he used for his chicken 
and tgg business, although he had some fifty 
pigs which ran loose most everywhere. Of 
course he also kept cows — a half dozen of them, 
selling the cream to the local creamery (which, 
incidentally, was not owned by local capital) 
and using the buttermilk for his pigs and chick- 
ens. The pigs kept his orchard in good con- 
dition and the cows and horses furnished him 
with dressing for his other land. 

Now I want to make a point here : Dardoni 
was not a scientific farmer. He didn't know 
anything about the science of farming. He 
was not reviving worn-out soil by the use of 
modern cultivation. He was not applying 
laboratory methods; he was applying horse 
sense. He didn't know any more about farm- 



A TOWN ASLEEP 59 

ing, or as much perhaps, as every mother's son 
of those who had been born and brought up 
here and their fathers before them. But he 
did know enough to work his land and he had 
learned to do that in a country where a single 
acre means something. The only difference 
between him and these others was that he got 
up early in the morning and worked — worked 
all day long. The one thing in his favor was 
that he also had a business instinct and appre- 
ciated the value of his city market. But prin- 
cipally his success lay in the fact that he used 
every single advantage and made the most of 
it. 

He lived in a large old-fashioned Colonial 
house which had once been owned by a. local 
politician who had succeeded in being elected to 
Congress for a single term in Civil War days, 
and who had never found it necessary to do 
anything afterwards. His son dissipated his 
fortune and the place came on the market about 
the time Dardoni happened along. Dardoni 
hadn't improved its appearance any but he had 
added a big barn and several out houses. His 
family consisted of a wife and six children, 
the oldest being Lucia who was eighteen and 
who had been educated at the local high school. 



6o NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

and the youngest being Joe, now three years 
old. The rest of his household included a half 
dozen young men, all relatives, to whom he 
paid an average of ten dollars a week. They 
were good workers and seldom remained with 
him longer than three .years before buying a 
place of their own. Through him, directly 
and indirectly, some forty families had already 
settled in the village. 

Personally I found Dardoni a most interest- 
ing and agreeable fellow, and the more I saw 
him the better I liked him. He had become 
thoroughly Americanized in the sense that he 
had really made America his home with the 
expectation of spending his life here and hav- 
ing his sons and daughters live here after him. 
He had been naturalized and was a heavy tax- 
payer but he took no interest in the affairs of 
the town. For one thing his home was his 
castle and for another his habit of thought 
was to accept conditions as they were and 
make the best of them without any attempt to 
change them. But whenever I suggested any 
needed improvement, such as in the matter of 
better roads, I found him alive and willing to 
do his share. 

One other incident that winter set me to 



A TOWN ASLEEP 6i 

thinking and made me feel more than ever the 
need of some radical revolution in this old 
town. Hadley came to me in January and 
wanted to borrow fifty dollars. 

"Show me that you really need it and I'll let 
you have it/' I said. 

"Vve got a note comin' due," he answered. 

"Who holds it?" I asked. 

"Dardoni," he answered. 

"What did you borrow from him for?" I 
asked. 

"Well, there was considerable sickness in the 
family last year and I got hard up." 

"You own your house all clear?" 

"Yes — except that Dardoni took a first mort- 
gage on it for the note." 

"And you have five acres of land?" 

"Yes." 

"And there's only you and your wife?" 

"Yes." 

"Then how—" 

"Doctors and medicines cost something," he 
broke in, rather resenting my further question- 
ing. 

Now here was a concrete example of a man 
without any bad habits in the ordinary mean- 
ing of the word, who had lived here fifty years 



62 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

in a house and on land which came to him by 
inheritance, who had worked with a fair 
amount of industry and raised three children, 
all now away from home and self supporting, 
who in a crisis had been forced to borrow 
money from an immigrant who hadn't been in 
this country ten years and who started without 
a cent. On the face of it there was something 
wrong here, but what was it? In a nutshell, 
lack of thrift, lack of industry, lack of enter- 
prise. Hadley was doing here on a farm ex- 
actly what I had done in the suburbs; he was 
living and always had lived up to the last cent 
he made. Even at this time, when he was ear- 
ning forty dollars a month from me, he didn't 
save a cent. He bought hay and corn for his 
horse ; he bought expensive meats for his table ; 
instead of mending old harnesses, he bought 
new harnesses ; he subscribed for a daily paper 
and had a telephone in his house which he didn't 
need any more than he needed a safe deposit 
vault. In the meanwhile he had five acres of 
idle land at his back. He was in a state of 
lethargy as the whole town was in a state 
of lethargy. He was stagnant — half-dead. A 
dozen things which had been luxuries to his 
father had become necessities to him. The 



A TOWN ASLEEP 63 

price of everything had increased and he hadn't 
kept pace with it. What was true of him was 
true of the whole town. I loaned him the 
money but that night I had a talk with Ruth. 

''Ruth," I said, 'Tm going to give this old 
town the biggest shaking up it's had since the 
glacial period." 

"Why, Billy, what's the matter?" she asked. 

''Everything's the matter," I said. 'This 
village isn't sleeping, but dead. It's time 
someone blew the resurrection trumpet. I'm 
going to blow it ; I'm going to play Gabriel." 

She looked up from her sewing with a laugh, 
but when she saw I was in earnest she put aside 
her work and came over and put her arms 
around me. 



CHAPTER V 

STIRRING THINGS UP 

I meant every word I said and I set to work 
right off. One of the first things I did was to 
have the Reverend Percy Cunningham up to 
supper. His church was probably the biggest 
social influence in the village and so if it was 
possible I wanted to enlist him at the begin- 
ning. Personally I didn't think much of his 
ability. He was a serious man who acted as 
though he thought his chief function here was 
the conducting of funerals. The very sight of 
him was a grim reminder of death. He 
dressed in black, seldom smiled, and he walked 
on tiptoe. His appearance was all the more 
marked because it happened that Seavey, the 
local undertaker, was a roly-poly, good-natured 
man and the biggest sport in town. He owned 
an automobile, drank more than was good for 
him, and acted as starter at all the horse races 
within a radius of fifty miles. Perhaps it was 
to offset this blithe influence of his colleague 

64 



STIRRING THINGS UP 65 

that Cunningham felt it necessary to go to the 
other extreme. At any rate Ruth said that 
whenever he called in the afternoon she felt 
as though she ought to darken the room and 
send the children off to a neighbor. 

We had him up and Ruth laid herself out to 
make the meal as cheerful as possible, but when 
we were through I felt like saying Amen. 
Ruth spoke of it later as the Last Supper and 
was ashamed of herself afterwards. 

I took him into the front room and began on 
him at once. 

"Mr. Cunningham," I said, "it seems to me 
the time has come for this town to take out a 
new lease on life." 

"To be sure," he agreed. 

"Well," I said, "you've been here longer than 
I have; what's your suggestion for bringing 
this about?" 

He thought a moment and then he said, "I've 
been seriously considering your suggestion for 
a very long while — in fact ever since I took up 
my pastoral work here." 

"That was about fifteen years ago?" I in- 
quired. 

"Sixteen years this coming spring," he an- 
swered. 



66 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

''You ought to have reached some conclusion 
in that time/' I said. 

"To be sure/' he nodded. 'What I thought 
I should do when I saw my opportunity was to 
invite here two or three good evangelists and 
hold a rousing week of revival services.'' 

Now I have no objection to revival services. 
In their way they do good. But after all, their 
function is largely religious and I had in mind 
just at present something more material. Be- 
sides, the revival end seemed to me to be his 
own duty. He himself ought to have been 
holding meetings all these last sixteen years. 

"That's all right/' I said. 'T guess we need 
something of the sort. But to get down to 
brass tacks, have you any idea how many peo- 
ple in this town are in debt?" 

"No," he said, "I have never looked into 
that." 

"About half of them," I said. "Have you 
any idea how many of the men and women in 
this town are drunkards?" 

"Women — drunkards?" he exclaimed. 

"About a third of them," I said. 

"Mr. Carleton, you must be mistaken !" 

"Ask your druggist; ask Moulton!" I said. 
"They'll tell you. Most of the children are 



STIRRING THINGS UP 67 

either doped or stimulated with patent medi- 
cines. Besides this, there are a dozen or two 
downright morphine fiends. Dr. Wentworth 
is responsible for that.'' 

''Dr. Wentworth!" he exclaimed. 'That is 
a very serious charge, Mr. Carleton. Dr. 
Wentworth has been practicing here for al- 
most forty years." 

"More's the pity," I said. "He belongs 
back in the dark ages. I went to him myself 
with a touch of neuralgia and he prescribed 
morphine before Fd been in his office fifteen 
minutes. It's become a habit with him just be- 
cause it's the simplest way of relieving pain. 
However, those are details. They don't ac- 
count for the general lethargy, for the decay- 
ing orchards, for the waste land and wasted 
opportunities which are lying all around your 
parish. Now, to take another tack for a mo- 
ment — did it ever strike you as significant that 
every foreign-born settler who has come here 
during the last ten years is waxing fat and 
prosperous?" 

"I've seen very little of the foreign element," 
he said. 

"Why?" 

He smiled weakly. 



68 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

'They are hardly of us," he said, ''either in 
faith or standards. It has always seemed to 
me a pity that they should have found their 
way here/' 

I became heated at that. 

"Pity!" I exclaimed. "It's the one ray of 
hope in this whole blessed village. They came 
here and are coming here with the old-time 
spirit of the men who founded this town. 
They are adventurers — pioneers. They come 
here fresh, eager, earnest, with simple tastes 
and simple standards. They are making good 
and they are going to continue to make good 
until — mark my words — they own not only this 
town but all New England." 

He sat up at this. 

"It's a fact," I said. "Look around you. 
It's clear as daylight. On the one hand we 
have the old stock, either abandoning their 
farms or dying upon them; on the other we 
have the newxomers pressing in with the eager- 
ness of explorers, taking up these farms and 
bringing them to life. Why, this is Eden to 
them. Where they came from they've been 
making a living off bits of soil that we wouldn't 
build a pigsty on, and here they have acres 
for the asking. Look at Dardoni; look at 



STIRRING THINGS UP 69 

Tony; look at the dozen others. They are set- 
tling this country anew in exactly the same 
spirit that our ancestors did. And they are 
going to win in the same fashion. They are 
going to drive these shiftless remnants before 
them exactly as our forefathers drove off the 
Indians. We think Columbus discovered this 
country in 1492 once for all, when it's really 
being discovered now before our face and eyes. 
We think this country was settled by the Pil- 
grims, when as a matter of fact the real settling 
is going on to-day." 

I didn't intend to orate but as I sat facing 
Cunningham I felt as though I were facing the 
whole village. With his black clothes, his 
drooping shoulders, and his fifteen years of de- 
liberation, he represented just the element I 
wanted to get at. But I didn't rouse him very 
much. He murmured something about being 
surprised and I ran on still further. 

''Now," I said, ''what are we going to do 
about it? Most of the younger generation 
are moving away as fast as they are old 
enough. They are either going into the cities 
or out West. I don't blame them for that. 
It's encouraging to think they have life enough 
left in 'em to crawl out of this frog pond. 



70 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

Those who don't emigrate are as old and 
feeble at seventeen as their grandfathers were 
at seventy. What are we going to do about 
it?" 

''Really, Mr. Carleton, I— I don't know." 

'Then let me give you my idea : let's all emi- 
grate." 

He evidently thought I was crazy. 

"I mean it," I said. "And I know what I'm 
talking about because I've already done it once. 
Let's emigrate out of the past into the present. 
Let's emigrate to new New England. Let's 
start a pioneer movement and tackle these old 
acres as though they were virgin soil. Let's 
join Dardoni and his fellows." 

*'You don't mean literally, Mr. Carleton?" 

"Why not?" 

"Wouldn't that be — to speak frankly — a lit- 
tle bit like going backwards ?" 

" If you like," I said. "But it wouldn't hurt 
this town any to go back a hundred years or 
so. The curse comes in standing still." 

"Well," he said, preparing to leave, "your 
suggestion is interesting — very. I most cer- 
tainly will think it over." 

Remembering how long it took him to think 



STIRRING THINGS UP 71 

over things before, that didn't sound very en- 
couraging. 

"All right," I said, "and in the meanwhile 
Tm going to start something." 



CHAPTER VI 

A GAME WORTH PLAYING 

The pioneer idea — that was the heart of my 
scheme; the same old idea that had already 
lifted me from the slough of a salary and the 
suburbs and put me on my feet. Under its 
inspiration I had worked out my salvation in 
the city and now, although I had come here for 
peace and quiet, I felt as though I were being 
challenged by a cuff on the cheek. No live 
man could sit down and look on calmly at such 
conditions as faced me here. When these 
people within sight of a hungry market said 
that farming didn't pay it proved that the 
fundamental trouble was not lack of oppor- 
tunity but lack of appreciation of the 
opportunity. Just sit down and figure out 
what the forebears of these same people ac- 
complished on these very acres. Out of this 
soil they wrenched the capital that went far 
towards establishing the richest nation on the 
face of the earth. But it may be argued that 

72 



I 



A GAME WORTH PLAYING 73 

the Pilgrims had the advantage of virgin land. 
So they did, but virgin land in New England 
meant also virgin rocks — a million or more to 
the acre as testified to by the stone walls of to- 
day; it meant virgin trees with a wild tangle 
of roots and no dynamite to blow them out 
with ; it meant virgin cold and the crudest kind 
of stoves to fight it ofif with ; it meant crude vir- 
gin farm implements and virgin Indians to 
make the use of them interesting by zipping 
arrows from ambush at the sturdy plowman. 
And yet in spite of these handicaps and a hun- 
dred others, those same pioneers fought it out 
with such fine spirit that there are to-day men 
who sigh because they were not living then in- 
stead of now. They won a comfortable living 
and so did their sons and grandsons after them, 
even though they were forced to sacrifice half 
their time and money and life in battle to es- 
tablish this nation which now we enjoy already 
established. And they did this because of the 
pioneer spirit back of them — a spirit which a 
nation allows to die at its peril. 

With all I saw before me I didn't believe 
that spirit was yet dead. As Ruth said, there 
wasn't a youngster in this very village, who 
though he wasn't worth his salt here, wouldn't 



74 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

buck up if placed on a Western homestead a 
hundred miles or more from civilization. The 
spirit of his ancestors would then rouse him. 
They were proving it by taking up farms in 
Canada. In a less marked degree it was this 
same spirit which without their knowledge 
prompted them to do better in the cities at the 
beginning than at home. The thing then, to 
my mind, which was needed was to make these 
same young men realize that it was really just 
as much of a brave adventure to make a few 
acres pay in the East as in the West. That 
was what I had got hold of when standing 
helpless without the capital to go West. I 
assumed that I had already traveled a thou- 
sand miles to get where I already was and 
from that point didn't go ten miles from home. 
Now it was this spirit of a young nation 
which the foreign-born caught. In the older 
country where it was dead I haven't much 
doubt but what Dardoni and his fellows were 
a shiftless lot. If they had remained they 
would probably have plugged along in a beg- 
garly rut. It wasn't until they came over 
here that they roused themselves to work, not 
ploddingly like uninspired natives, but with a 
romantic fervor that made these old acres yield 



A GAME WORTH PLAYING 75 

as they had never yielded before. They 
brought with them no modern agricultural 
methods. They took the land as they found it, 
and it was their simple pioneer standards, their 
pioneer earnestness, their pioneer courage, that 
brought them success. They worked for inde- 
pendence with the same pioneer enthusiasm 
and industry which inspired the early settlers. 
How long would that little band of adventur- 
ers who landed on the rocky shore of Massa- 
chusetts have lasted if they had shown no more 
backbone than those who to-day fold their 
hands and shake their heads at the deserted 
farms surrounding them ? 

The more I talked over these things with 
Ruth the more excited I became. It was as 
clear as daylight that idle land could not for- 
ever exist in the face of a needy market. I 
had learned at school the phrase that "Nature 
abhors a vacuum." Rural New England to- 
day was practically a vacuum and nature was 
already finding a way to fill it. She was for- 
cing in adventurers of other nations with the 
challenge to the native born to either get to 
work or get out. If anyone wants to see proof 
of this for himself let him travel through the 



^(y NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

Connecticut valley, or along the Massachusetts 
cape, or through the small towns in the neigh- 
borhood of Boston. Let him go into the hill 
towns of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 
New York, and he will find there Italians, 
Portuguese, Russians, Poles, already estab- 
lished and accepted where twenty years ago 
a foreigner was a curiosity. They are the 
vanguard of the army Nature is marshaling 
for her certain purpose. Let the traveler look 
below the superficial squalor and learn how 
many people these pioneers are supporting, 
how much they are saving and how much they 
are buying, and he will catch an inkling of 
what's afoot. I had seen this going on in the 
city, but there the contrast between what was 
and what is was not so marked. New Eng- 
land cities have long ceased to be merely 
New England, and I had come out into the 
country for that very reason. I had wanted 
a taste of undiluted New England, and this 
was what I found. 

In the meanwhile Dick had been taking hold 
of the contracting business with such good re- 
sults that I found myself able to throw more 
and more upon him. He had with him a col- 
lege mate, and the two under the spur of youth 



A GAME WORTH PLAYING 77 

went hustling after new business at a pace that 
made my services unnecessary except as a sort 
of advisory committee. With my new inter- 
ests to occupy me, with the business prosper- 
ing under the younger management and with 
a fair amount in the bank as a surety against 
accidents, I was glad to have it so. I believe 
it's an older man's duty to turn over his busi- 
ness to the younger generation whenever it is 
possible. During the winter I watched the 
progress of the two boys closely and was sur- 
prised at the shrewdness and level headedness 
that Dick displayed. I give credit for that to 
his experience in selling newspapers on the 
streets. It taught him not only self-reliance 
but in his association with men both self-con- 
fidence and poise. He knew how to approach 
men, how to put forward his case in the short- 
est possible time, and then how and when to 
leave. He was popular too with the gang and 
I found the latter turning more and more to 
him. 

It was in February that after a long talk 
with Ruth I called the boy into my den one 
evening. 

*'Dick,'' I said^ *'I haven't been very much 
more than a figurehead in the business during 



78 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

the last few months and now I think FU pull 
out altogether/' 

"For Heaven's sake, Dad," he answered, 
"what's the matter with you?" 

"Nothing," I said. "Only you don't need 
me and I want to take up farming." 

"You'd better let me call in the doc," he an- 
swered. 

"Do I look as though I needed him?" said 
I. "It's sure that if I felt that way I wouldn't 
be undertaking a new business." 

"It's all right for you to putter around here 
for fun," he said, "but you know as well as I 
that you can't make farming pay. Just look 
around you — " 

"That's what makes me believe farming will 
pay," I said. "I look around me and I see men 
doing just what you advise me to do — putter- 
ing around. You wouldn't expect to make 
contracting pay if you went at it that way, 
would you?" 

"I know, but—" 

"Look here," I broke in, glad of a chance to 
express some of the things I had been thinking- 
over for the last few months. "Look here, 
boy, do you realize what as a business propo- 
sition this village is? It's a big unused plant 



A GAME WORTH PLAYING 79 

in which thousands of dollars have been in- 
vested, and it's lying idle next door to a mar- 
ket crying for its products. If you saw a big 
factory building all equipped and standing 
idle, with labor loafing around the doors, with 
its books filled with orders, you'd jump in, 
wouldn't you? Well, that's exactly what this 
village is. Small as it is, you've only to look 
at the assessor's books to find that over a mil- 
lion dollars is invested here in lands and an- 
other half million in buildings. There are 
over eight hundred voters in town and not a 
hundred of them are making more than a bare 
living out of this investment. It's safe to say 
that not a quarter of one per cent, is being 
made on this big capital. And yet within a 
team drive of us there's a market so large that 
it's bringing its produce at a profit some three 
thousand miles. It's not only bringing it 
there, but it's bringing it into this very town." 

"But look here. Dad," Dick interrupted, 
"you don't own the town, you know." 

"But I own part of it," I said, "and I intend 
to help operate the rest." 

"I don't know how," he said. "Besides it's 
been tried and the business hasn't paid." 

"What about Dardoni?" I asked. 



8o NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

"Thaf s so/' 

''Vm not going to undertake anything that 
isn't being done to-day right under our noses. 
It's as true as gospel preaching that these old 
world pioneers are going to own this village 
and utilize to the fullest these opportunities 
unless we do ourselves. What is true here is 
true of all New England. That isn't a cry 
of wolf when there is no wolf, either; it's the 
sober truth. These fellows are going at their 
work right. It isn't luck with them. You 
can't say that New York is owned by Jews 
because Hebrews are a lucky race. They are 
the unluckiest race on the face of the earth. 
They own New York because they are a pio- 
neer race. And because of this they are going 
to own more than New York if we Americans 
don't wake up." 

"By George, you're right, Dad," exclaimed 
Dick. "What is more, they deserve all they 
get. They've worked and sacrificed for every 
cent of it." 

"Exactly as our ancestors did when they 
were adventurers in a new land," I said. "It 
gets back again to the pioneer idea. This 
country with its institutions no longer belongs 
to the people who made it. It's being made all 



A GAME WORTH PLAYING 8i 

over again and it belongs to those who are help- 
ing in the new making." 

"Right ! Right ! But what you want to do 
is to get out and preach this. YouVe worked 
hard, Dad, and it's time you had a rest.'' 

''There's been preaching enough, Dick," I 
said, "and as for rest — a man doesn't rest at 
my age by doing nothing." 

"Then what's your scheme?" 

"To make my own farm pay and then to help 
my neighbors make their farms pay." 

"I'll stake my last dollar that you make your 
own pay if you start in to do it, but as for the 
others — have you thought out any plan?" 

"In a rough way," I said. "In the first place 
I'm convinced that talk doesn't do any good. 
These people have been preached at through 
the papers, magazines and pulpit until their 
brains are calloused. They aren't interested 
in the problem in the abstract. They aren't 
interested in anything much — not even them- 
selves. They're convinced that farming 
doesn't pay and they have before them the 
visible proof that it doesn't so far as they are 
concerned anyhow. On the other hand, there's 
Dardoni, but they dispose of him by calling 
him a Dago." 



82 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

"Then what's left?'' demanded Dick. 

"To get them interested in themselves first 
of all. The only way I know of to do that is 
to make it worth their while in good hard 
cash." 

"Bribe 'em?" 

"It amounts to that. I want to get them to- 
gether in some sort of an organization." 

"There's the Grange," said Dick. 

"It has played its part and in some places is 
still playing it. But around here people are 
sick of it. It has become nothing but a social 
club." 

"Well?" 

"You know what they are doing in the West 
and South; they are offering cash prizes to 
boys for the best crop of corn raised on a given 
area. They've roused the whole country to the 
competition and have advertised it so well that 
the winner becomes for the moment a national 
figure. That's what we ought to do here, only 
my plan is to give the competition a wider 
scope. We ought to have prizes for the older 
men and for the women. We ought to stimu- 
late better care of our apple orchards, better 
hay fields, better potatoes, better household 
economy, better kitchen gardens." 



A GAME WORTH PLAYING 83 

"Hold on/' interrupted Dick, "who's going 
to pay for these prizes ?" 

"In the end the club will raise the money. 
To start with it ought to be raised by public 
subscription." 

"If I know this crowd, youVe got a job." 

"Ten prizes of a hundred dollars each will 
amount to only a thousand dollars. The busi- 
ness men of the town ought to give half that 
the first year; Til give the rest." 

"Hear ! Hear !" shouted Dick, 

"As an investment," I said. "If we can 
bring this old town to life it will pay every 
mother's son in it. If we can make it the 
livest, the most beautiful village in the state, 
as it ought to be made, we'll attract a desira- 
ble class of residents and double real estate 
values. The prosperity of every citizen is the 
prosperity of the community. In the mean- 
while we'll decrease the cost of living here and 
give men cash to pay their bills. Good Lord, 
there's no limit as to what can be done if we 
can rouse these people. I tell you it's a great 
big business proposition if nothing more." 

"By George, I don't know but what you're 
right, Dad," exclaimed Dick. "It will be a 
game worth playing, anyhow." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PIONEERS 

Our plan was simple and to the point; first 
to organize the village into a club on the sim- 
plest and broadest lines. It was to be called 
'The Pioneers/' and every taxpayer and the 
family of every taxpayer was to be eligible 
for membership. The membership fee was to 
be for adults one dollar, for women fifty cents, 
for boys ten cents. We were to have a presi- 
dent, a secretary-treasurer, and a board of five 
directors. The latter were to pass on all dis- 
bursements and had the privilege of canceling 
membership fees in any worthy case. Our 
constitution and by-laws were to be merely per- 
functory and as free of red tape as was con- 
sistent with proper organization. 

Holt, a young lawyer in town who had 
taken an immediate interest in the plan, un- 
dertook to secure the pledges for the thou- 
sand dollars so that at the first meeting we 
might have something tangible to present. I 

84 



THE PIONEERS 85 

headed the list with five hundred dollars, he 
came second with fifty, and Ed Barclay made 
up another fifty. Holt secured the rest in two 
days from the village merchants. Not a man 
refused to subscribe. On the face of it the 
scheme appealed to them as worth a try any- 
how. It took no argument to make them ap- 
preciate the fact that their business was de- 
pendent upon the prosperity of the community, 
but it impressed them as a distinct novelty to 
attempt anything to further the prosperity of 
the same community upon which they were de- 
pendent. They had always accepted condi- 
tions as fixed by forces over which they had 
no control. They were like farmers who, be- 
fore the days of irrigation, accepted drought 
as a decree of God. The idea of doing any- 
thing to remedy natural conditions never oc- 
curred to them. This new plan was carrying 
matters even one step further; it was an at- 
tempt not to remedy but actually to create. 
The argument I had used with Dick about the 
town being a big unused plant appealed to 
them. With a market waiting for us and 
plenty of labor on hand we proposed to set the 
wheels agoing and create a business for the 
merchants and for every citizen in the town. 



86 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

Three days later, on January fifteenth, the 
following notice prepared by Holt, appeared 
in the local paper spread over half the front 
page in place of the usual stale Washington 
correspondence : 

ATTENTION! 

Next Wednesday evening, January nine- 
teenth, a meeting will be held in the Opera 
House to discuss a plan for putting money into 
the pockets of every resident of this village. 

WE ARE GOING TO WAKE UP ! 

A committee of citizens has contributed the 
sum of ONE THOUSAND Dollars which will 
be divided among those who attend this meet- 
ing and fulfil the conditions. 

WE ARE GOING TO WAKE UP! 

Come and bring the whole family. The 
Woodmen band will furnish music. 

WE SURE ARE GOING TO WAKE UP! 

This looked to me a little bit like circus ad- 
vertising and I wanted Holt to tone it down, 
but he shook his head. 

"I'd put it in red ink if they had any in the 
printing shop, but they haven't. You don't 
use a tinkly silver bell when you want to call 



THE PIONEERS 87 

this bunch in the morning; you use a cow bell." 
In addition to this we had the same call to 
arms printed in the form of a circular — Holt 
unearthed some green paper for this — and 
mailed a copy to everyone in town. Those we 
had left over we tacked up in the stores and 
on telegraph poles. It's pretty certain no one 
missed seeing it, and if they did they had to be 
deaf not to hear about it, for there wasn't much 
of anything else talked about from the moment 
it appeared. We wanted to get everyone to- 
gether for once if we never did again, and we 
certainly succeeded. 

An hour before the meeting was called to 
order the hall was packed jam full and there 
were at least a hundred who couldn't get in. 
There is something electric about the enthu- 
siasm of people in just being together. The 
whole village rubbing shoulders with one an- 
other in a bunch had its effect. They were on 
edge with excitement and began to show signs 
of waking up on the spot. The slightest in- 
cident was enough to send a laugh through 
the crowd and it took nothing at all to start a 
cheer. 

Holt was flying around like a hen with its 
head cut off trying to make room for those 



88 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

outside, collecting chairs and poking tip the 
janitor to keep the hall warm. His face was 
flushed and his eyes bright with the excite- 
ment of it. I myself was fairly stage struck 
when I looked out from behind the wings and 
saw the gathering. I found it difficult to catch 
my breath and heartily wished someone else 
was going to preside. I tried to persuade Holt 
to open the meeting but he wouldn't. 

*'No, siree, you're the man. Where's that 
confounded band?" He was off in a second 
to round them up and make out the programme 
for the music. He had to make room for them 
on the stage and a few minutes later they struck 
up the Star Spangled Banner. After they had 
played it through once Holt stepped to the front 
after nodding towards them to repeat. 
''Now," he said, "everyone join in." 
He stood there like the leader of a chorus 
beating time with his hands, and every man, 
woman and child sang his best. They sang 
the second verse with a vim that strained their 
throats. As I watched them my eyes grew 
blurry and my knees weak. I began to ques- 
tion all the hard things I had said about them, 
for if ever patriotism was expressed in music 
it was then. It seemed to me that a hundred 



THE PIONEERS 89 

years and more rolled back, revealing every 
man here as ready to shoulder a musket for his 
country as ever their ancestors had been. 
When the singing ceased and it came time for 
me to step forward I felt worse than I did when 
as a boy I had to speak a piece on Friday after- 
noon. I was appointed temporary chairman 
by acclaim and then started in to deliver the 
little speech I had prepared for the occasion. 
But I hadn't gone far before I forgot it and 
took a new course. At first I had been self- 
conscious like a bashful man among strangers, 
but when I was used to the many eyes staring 
at me I felt as though I was with my own 
family, A common country and a common 
cause seemed to unite us on the spot. I had 
wished to avoid the personal. Even in the face 
of the publicity I have already given the little 
happenings of my own life, I can truthfully 
say I don't like it. But I felt here as I felt 
before when I wrote for print, that what a 
man can talk of from his own knowledge counts 
for a great deal more than his theories. So 
before I knew it I found myself telling briefly 
what I put down in "One Way Out." I tried 
to impress upon them the opportunities that 
are open to a man who tackles life in a pio- 



90 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

neer spirit and the fun of the fight. Then I 
rehearsed what their ancestors had done on 
these same acres upon which they now hved 
and tried to make them understand that if to- 
day there were more handicaps there were also 
corresponding opportunities. I spoke of the 
big market awaiting their produce and by my 
personal experiences in living in the big city 
made them understand how hungry a market 
it was. 

''If your great grandfathers could come back 
here to-day," I said, ''there isn't a man of 
them who wouldn't build a fortune upon this 
land." 

I was conscious of cheering from time to 
time but I didn't realize how deeply they were 
really moved until I had finished. Then I be- 
came conscious again that I was on a platform 
facing them and I saw them rise to their feet 
and cheer again and again. I had in some 
way introduced Holt, but before he stepped 
forward he motioned to the band and they 
struck up Yankee Doodle Dandy. The leader 
didn't step lively enough for him and amid 
more cheering and laughing he took the lead- 
er's place and led them off at a quickstep that 
made the whole crowd keep pace with pound- 



THE PIONEERS 



91 



ing feet. Ruth was in the front row with 
Dick and I caught her eye. She smiled at me 
in a way that made me very proud. 

Holt, taking advantage of the right feeling 
I had created in the audience, developed at 
once the practical side of the proposition. 

''Have all the pioneers died or moved 
West?" he demanded. 

''No! No!" came the reply from a group 
of the younger men. 

"Right! Right!" he shouted. "What is 
more, we're going to prove it. We have a fine 
example here in Mr. Carleton, but we aren't 
going to allow him to be known for long as 
the only living specimen of pioneer captivity." 

This of course raised a laugh and then he 
told them something of what was being done 
in the middle West and South to encourage 
farming. Then he quoted from some of the 
reports recently made by the government and 
by agricultural schools to show what the possi- 
bilities for farming were right in New Eng- 
land. 

"Now," he said, "what we want to do is to 
get together and work together and fight to- 
gether and accomplish some of these things 
ourselves. The trouble with us is that it's 



92 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

been every man for himself and the devil take 
the hindmost. The farmer must help the mer- 
chant and the merchant help the farmer. To 
this end it is proposed that we organize our- 
selves into a club to be known as 'The Pio- 
neers.' " 

This was greeted with a cheer and then Holt 
outlined the plan as we had already outlined 
it among ourselves. This was greeted with 
a still noisier cheer. But when he mentioned 
the thousand dollars that had been raised as 
prize money the audience let itself loose. 

"Now," he said in conclusion, "I move you 
that we waste no further time in discussion 
but adopt at once the constitution and by-laws 
for this organization as here prepared.'' 

It was seconded and carried unanimously. 

''Now/' said Holt, 'T move you that Mr. 
William Carleton be elected president of this 
club by a unanimous vote." 

It was done. 

I took the floor again and nominated Holt 
as secretary-treasurer, which was seconded 
and passed. 

Then Holt, the three leading merchants and 
myself were elected a committee of five direc- 
tors to prepare the further details. The 



THE PIONEERS 93 

meeting then adjourned until the following 
Wednesday. 

Holt had ready on the platform paper and 
ink for those to sign who wished to become 
members, and no sooner was the meeting over 
than a rush for the stage began. Two hun- 
dred and sixty-three signatures were secured 
then and there and as near as I could judge 
the only reason everyone in the hall didn't sign 
was because only the hardy could reach the 
table. 

Now no one could have asked for a more au- 
spicious beginning than this, but I had seen 
enough of how men act in a group to know 
that the real test would come later after each 
individual had cooled off and thought over the 
proposition for himself. Consequently while I 
considered this evening's enthusiasm to be de- 
cidedly significant and boding well for the 
scheme, I expected a slump sooner or later. 
Holt however couldn't see even a speck in the 
clear sky, and I for one was glad of it. It's 
good to see a man that w^ay. 

''They jumped at it like a hungry trout does 
at a worm," he declared. ''This is just the 
encouragement for which they've been wait- 
ing twenty-five years. Before next Wednes- 



94 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



day I expect to have the name of everyone who 
can hold a pen on that Hst/' 

And Ruth was about as enthusiastic as Holt. 

"It was fine, Billy/' she said. *'You cer- 
tainly kept your promise about waking them 
up.'' 

In looking back over these last few pages it 
strikes me that perhaps these things aren't very 
important but my pen sort of ran away with 
me as I remembered that first meeting. But 
then again maybe these details are significant 
as showing how easy it was to rouse these peo- 
ple as a whole in contrast with how difficult 
it was to inspire them individually. If Holt 
and I had taken any one of these men into an 
ofiice and given him the same talk it would 
have gone in one ear and out the other without 
leaving even a record of its progress. 

During the next week the five of us worked 
hard on our list of prizes. We wanted the 
money to cover as much ground as possible 
but we also wanted each prize to be substantial 
enough to be tempting. This is what we 
finally made ready to report to the next meet- 
ing: 

I. For the best crop of hay on one acre of 
fresh broken land, one hundred dollars. 



THE PIONEERS 95 

2. For the best crop of hay on an acre of 
land already used as hay land, seventy-five dol- 
lars. 

3. For the best crop of corn on an acre of 
land, one hundred dollars. 

4. For the best house garden, seventy-five 
dollars. 

5. For the best market garden, seventy-five 
dollars. 

6. For the best flower garden, fifty dollars. 

7. For the best potato crop per acre, one 
hundred dollars. 

8. For the largest return from chickens ac- 
cording to capital invested, one hundred dol- 
lars. 

9. For the largest return from cows accord- 
ing to capital invested, one hundred dollars. 

10. For the largest return from pigs ac- 
cording to capital invested, one hundred dol- 
lars. 

1 1 . For the most notable improvement in an 
old orchard, one hundred and twenty-five dol- 
lars. 

This seemed at the time and it seems to me 
to-day a pretty fair division. It gave every- 
one a chance whether the owner of one acre or 
fifty, and it was varied enough to interest 



96 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

everyone. As the awards were to be made on 
the basis of capital invested it gave the poor 
man an equal chance with the well-to-do. 

To some people the main prizes of a hun- 
dred dollars may seem small, but just remem- 
ber that this was a bonus over and above the 
regular profit a man was sure to make on his 
six months' work. Furthermore, a hundred 
dollars in the country means a good deal more 
than it does in the city. Furthermore again, 
one hundred dollars in a lump sum is worth 
two hundred dollars in installments. And 
finally, one hundred dollars as a prize looks 
about as big as a thousand dollars. Fve 
known men to spend a hundred dollars in a 
lottery and consider their money well invested 
when they finally drew a prize of five dollars. 
In every newspaper contest you'll find men do- 
ing a hundred dollars' worth of work to get a 
chance at a ten dollar prize. 

The second meeting was almost as well at- 
tended as the first and the committee's report 
was received with enthusiasm. But the thing 
which pleased me most was the fact that it 
was the young' men who came early and 
crowded up into the front of the hall. Holt 



THE PIONEERS 97 

noticed this and pointed out a goodly number 
of youngsters who never before had taken any 
interest in farming at all. It is doubtful if 
they did now except as a means for reaching 
the prizes. However, that point didn't worry 
me. I knew that in order to win the money 
they must first of all make their land pay, and 
once they got into their heads the fact the soil 
would pay, half our object was attained. 

But this suggested a new idea. In fact, 
every step we took suggested further develop- 
ment. Our scheme grew by itself like a weed, 
which to my mind is the logical way for an 
enterprise of this sort to grow. After we had 
adjourned until the following Wednesday I 
called the attention of the board of directors to 
the fact that so many young men who had al- 
ways affected to scorn farming showed an in- 
terest in our proposition. 

"Now," I said, ''it seems to me a pity to let 
them go at their work in haphazard fashion. 
The most any of them know, probably, is to 
plow and harrow the soil, put in their seed, 
and then wait for results.'' 

"Well," said Moulton, "if they keep down 
the weeds it will keep them out of mischief, 
anyhow." 



98 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

"And they'll get discouraged in a season, 
if not sooner/' I said. ''No, we want to help 
them do more than that — we want them to get 
results. It won't mean anything to them or to 
you if they don't." 

''Right," agreed Holt. "Swanson, you're 
the farmer of the board. It's up to you to in- 
struct them." 

Swanson had a fifty-acre farm on which he 
raised hay with better results than some, sim- 
ply because his land was better. 

"They prob'ly think they know more'n I do 
now," he answered. 

There wasn't much doubt about that, for no 
one ever has much faith in local authority. 
Still I saw the old man was rather proud that 
the suggestion had been made and I didn't wish 
to hurt his feelings. 

"Mr. Swanson is a busy man," I said. 
"What we want is someone who can come here 
and address the club as a club. I thought that 
possibly the State Agricultural School might 
help us out." 

Swanson threw up his head at this like an 
old war horse scenting a battle. 

"Huh," he grunted, "what do them fellers 



THE PIONEERS 



99 



know 'bout farmin'? Half of 'em never held 
a plow handle in their lives." 

''Maybe you're right," I said, ''but if it's true 
I'd like to have one of them down here and 
help show him up." 

"What they don't know 'bout farmin' would 
fill a book," he growled. 

"We'll put you down in the audience and let 
you pop questions at them," I laughed. "Any- 
way it ought to keep up the interest of the club 
until spring. No harm done anyway. I put 
the motion that I be instructed to write the 
school and see what can be done." 

"Seconded," chirped in Holt. 

Swanson didn't object, and so the next day 
I sent off my letter. In it I told briefly what 
we had done and what we wished to do and 
asked for advice. To my surprise I received 
at once an enthusiastic letter from the presi- 
dent himself asking for a personal interview. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE NEW WAY 

In conversation with a dozen or more of the 
better farmers of our town in an endeavor to 
get at the most important features of what in 
the way of instructions we needed, I was sur- 
prised to find that suspicion of agricultural 
school methods was general. The farmer 
looked as much askance at these teachers as 
he did at college men. They thought them 
steeped in book learning and without practical 
experience. If they admitted that at the ex- 
periment stations these men produced fine re- 
sults, it was only to add, ''But thet ain't runnin' 
a farm by a long shot." In some cases farmers 
had actually sent soil to be analyzed and had 
followed instructions about seeds and ferti- 
lizers, whether accurately or not I don't know, 
but certainly without gaining confidence in the 
new methods. This seemed to me a pity for 
the farmer if he was wrong and a pity for the 
taxpayer, who was furnishing funds to sup- 

100 



THE NEW WAY loi 

port these schools, if the farmer was right. 
So while I didn't receive much encouragement 
for this new feature of our enterprise 1 went 
to town to meet the president of the agricul- 
tural school, primed with a few opinions which 
I thought might wake him up at any rate. 

I will call him Dennison. I found him a 
gentle, scholarly-looking man of sixty, with 
earnest eyes and with an air that impressed me 
at once with his sincerity. There was, how- 
ever, about his mouth an expression of weary 
resignation as of a man who has fought a 
long fight without particularly encouraging re- 
sults. He was very cordial and wanted to hear 
at once just what our scheme was. I told him 
briefly how our ultimate hope was to arouse 
the pioneer spirit in the village and of the very 
practical incentive we had given to rouse, first 
of all, the ambition of the men to till the soil. 

"This prize system,'' I explained to him, ''is 
only a quick method of getting the community 
started. It gives the men something to work 
for that seems to them tangible. A possible 
five hundred dollar profit is vague and condi- 
tional, while a hundred dollars deposited in the 
bank is definite and concrete. They'll work 
for that." 



102 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

''I don't know but what you're right/' he 
said, as though impressed by the new idea. 
*'At any rate the experiment is worth foster- 
ing. I'll send you down all the speakers you'll 
listen to." 

'Thanks," I said, ''but right here is where 
we must use some judgment. These people 
are queer, and — well, I'll tell you frankly they 
haven't much faith in you fellows." 

He didn't take offense. He just smiled — a 
weary, patient kind of smile. 

"That's the pity of it," he said. 

"And what's the reason of it?" I asked di- 
rectly. 

'T take it you haven't lived long among them 
yourself," he answered. 

"No, I haven't," I said, "but I expect to live 
among them from now on. I've seen a lot of 
them as it is, because I've taken pains to." 

He nodded. 

"And I'll give you my own theory first," I 
said. "What we want down our way are prac- 
tical men. At this stage we don't want the- 
oretical farmers. We don't want to learn just 
yet the chemistry of farming, but how to make 
the most out of our land with the materials 
at hand. We aren't looking for the best re- 



THE NEW WAY 



103 



suits, but the most practical results. I wish 
you could teach us how to raise potatoes, hay, 
corn and garden stuff with the aid of plain 
old-fashioned manure, a plain old-fashioned 
plow, and plain old-fashioned sweat and elbow 
grease. The other can come later." 

Again he smiled. 

''Are you a college man, Mr. Carleton?" he 
asked. 

''No," I answered, wondering what that had 
to do with it. 

Then he took from his bag a catalogue of 
the school and went over with me the details 
of the courses given. While there was a back- 
ground of considerable theory, I must admit 
the work also covered about every practical 
branch of farming I had ever heard of. 

"Don't you think a man who mastered these 
courses would know something about farm- 
ing?" he asked. 

*'He should," I said. 'Tt certainly makes 
me feel as though I'd like to go through the 
school myself." 

"You ought to," he said. 

"Well," I said, "you turn out about forty 
graduates a year. What do most of the boys 
do?" 



104 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

'Teach/' he answered. 

''Most of them come from farms ?'' 

"Yes/' 

"Few of them go back to the farms?" 

"Not many/' he answered uneasily. "But 
some secure positions as farm managers." 

"Managers of other people's farms ?" 

"Yes, of course. Most of the young men 
have limited means and are without the capital 
to buy farms of their own." 

"But why don't they return to the farms 
they left before they came to school?" 

"I suppose they feel the opportunities there 
aren't large enough for them." 

"Exactly/' I said. "Now, Mr. Dennison, 
I'm not a farmer; Fm a business man. Fm 
taking hold of the possibilities of this village 
where I live as a business enterprise. And Fm 
not a teacher. Fm not in a position to criticise 
your work here except as a business man who 
wants to use some of it to help along his 
business enterprise. But right here I'd like 
to say frankly that it doesn't seem to me it 
would pay to hire instruction which ends by 
making the employee discontented with his 
work." 

"With equal frankness allow me to say I con- 



THE NEW WAY 



105 



sider that a very narrow way of looking at it," 
he answered. 

''Don't think Tm considering my own 
pocket," I said. ^'Vm only general manager 
for the group represented by the club. What 
I mean is that what we ourselves particularly 
want is instruction which will help every man 
to thrive and gain content on his own land and 
won't leave him ambitious to neglect it for a 
larger enterprise somewhere else. That ten- 
dency is just what we're fighting. There's 
been too much of 'Go west, young man.' Our 
battle cry is 'Stay at home, young man.' Hon- 
estly now — isn't that what New England 
needs?" 

"Perhaps," he nodded. 

"Inspiration to stay at home and compete 
with the old world pioneers who are pushing 
him hard, that's what the native New Eng- 
lander needs," I repeated. 

"Ah, those foreigners," he sighed. "If I 
had stuff like that to handle." 

"You might spoil it," I said, laughing in my 
turn. 

"Perhaps you're right," he joined in. "After 
all, there's no substitute for sheer industry." 

Well, the upshot of our pleasant argument 



io6 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

was that he offered to do all he could to help us 
in our project. 

"After all," he said, ''there are only five es- 
sentials in good farming. The first is to de- 
termine what the land lacks by analysis (don't 
get frightened — we'll do that much for you) ; 
the second is to supply that lack by proper fer- 
tilization ; the third is proper selection of seed ; 
the fourth is proper rotation of crops so that 
one crop will put back what the previous crop 
has taken out; and the fifth is just hard work 
in keeping the land cultivated. I don't see why 
in a general way that ground couldn't be cov- 
ered between now and spring. At any rate 
I'm willing to try it if you'll furnish the enthu- 
siasm." 

"I'll do that if I have to hire a brass band," 
I said. But I didn't need a brass band. With 
that prize money in prospect there wasn't a 
man who dared stay away for fear the other 
fellow might secure an advantage over him. 
We had two lectures a week open only to mem- 
bers of the club. We tried to make them as 
informal as possible and at the conclusion of 
each talk threw the meeting open for questions. 
Holt took down each lecture in shorthand and 
I had a half dozen copies made at my own 



THE NEW WAY 107 

expense. We kept one of these for the club 
as a matter of record but the others were at 
Holt's office where any member was allowed 
to take one for not over three days so that he 
might copy for himself anything he wished. 
It was surprising how soon those copies be- 
came thumb-marked and dog-eared. 

The speakers kept true to my requirements 
and followed substantially the outline laid out 
by Dennison at our first interview. The first 
speaker took up the matter of soil and had a 
difficult task on his hands to convince these 
men that not all dirt was soil and that not all 
soils were the same. 

"There's as much difference in land as there 
is in stock/' he said. "And if you want the 
best returns you have to handle it just as ten- 
derly and feed it just as properly. The next 
time you plant a cornfield don't think of it as a 
field but as a well bred cow or horse. Groom 
it as you would groom your horse or cow and 
feed it with the same care. Remember, too, 
that just as you don't expect your horse to give 
work or your cow to give milk without supply- 
ing the necessary material out of which to make 
work and make milk; you can't expect your 
field to give you back corn unless you supply 



io8 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

it with the material for making corn. That 
sounds reasonable, doesn't it? The poor 
farmer is the only workingman in the world 
except the Wall Street sucker who expects to 
get something for nothing. Nature supplies 
most of the elements free of charge, but what- 
ever you take out you have to put back.'' 

Then he went on to explain how different 
soils need different foods just as much as dif- 
ferent kinds of stock need different foods. 

'Tt all depends upon what you want to get 
back. If you want back eggs you use the food 
that will make eggs ; if you want back fat you 
use the food that will make fat; if you want 
back milk, you use the food that will make milk, 
and so on. Now, some of your land is already 
adapted by nature to supply certain things — 
corn, wheat, hay, potatoes, what not. When 
that is so, use what is given you. If, however, 
the land hasn't those elements you must supply 
them, either by fertilizers or by planting a 
preparatory crop that will use what is already 
present and leave behind what you want for the 
final crop." 

This likening of land to live stock was a fine 
idea. It impressed every man in the club. I 
know that in my own case I had always thought 



THE NEW WAY 109 

of land as about as fixed and abstract as a 
problem in geometry. This treating it as 
something living — as of course it really is — 
gave a man a new attitude towards it. It made 
plausible all the theories of care which fol- 
lowed. A man knows he has to feed and care 
for his live stock. If so, then why not his 
land, which is also a living thing? 

The second man took up the matter of fertili- 
zation — the restoring to the land such elements 
as have been used up by the previous crops and 
given back to the farmer in the form of pro- 
duce. It's an amazingly simple proposition 
when you stop to think about it. It's merely 
paying back money you've borrowed. If, after 
doing that a profit isn't left, you can't blame 
the money. 

The third man covered the proper selection 
of seeds. Like the previous speakers he 
pleaded for the substitution of horse sense and 
care in place of the present haphazard meth- 
ods. No more than all dirt is land are all ker- 
nels seeds. You must be sure that the seeds 
you plant are live seeds. The usual method is 
to plant them and if you get a crop, the seeds 
were surely alive; if you don't get a crop, the 
seeds were surely dead. But there is no need 



no NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

of risking your season's work on such an ex- 
periment. Take a sample fifty from your seeds 
a month or so before planting time, place these 
in a box and cover with earth, keep moist and 
warm and count the number of seeds which 
sprout. There you have as accurate a method 
of determining their germinating value as any 
chemist could give. If the seeds don't come 
up in a decent percentage, get some more. If 
they do, you have insured your crop so far as 
the seeds are concerned. The whole scheme 
of modern farming is to eliminate from the be- 
ginning all elements of chance so far as possi- 
ble, which is no more than every other business 
man does. 

The fourth speaker took up the rotation of 
crops, which is a somewhat more abstract 
proposition than the others. It seems that 
nearly every crop both takes from the land 
what it needs and gives back to a certain ex- 
tent something else in its place. Nature is no 
hog and generally pays her way. The whole 
secret is to so alternate your crops as to take 
full advantage of this fact. The matter has 
been determined to a science. 

The fifth speaker dwelt upon the necessity 
of proper cultivation — of plowing deep and 



THE NEW WAY m 

harrowing often. Here again was something 
that was within the understanding of the 
average man. Your soil and seeds need air 
and Hght as much as your Hve stock. You 
wouldn't expect a cow to thrive shut up in a 
dark stall with little air. When you harrow 
you do no more than throw open the barn win- 
dows and let in the sunshine. 

I have run over in this general way the 
ground covered by the speakers merely to show 
how simply and reasonably this subject of busi- 
ness-like farming can be presented when done 
right. It is neither an abstract nor a com- 
plex study and the essentials can be brought 
home to the every-day farmer in a very few 
months. 

Each speaker, moreover, at my suggestion, 
besides treating his special subject took occa- 
sion to talk on farming as a profession — and 
especially farming in New England. They 
emphasized the fact that farming is a big busi- 
ness proposition, an honorable calling, and 
not merely an effort to raise food supplies for 
the home. They all dwelt on the fact that New 
England always had been and still is a farm- 
ing region. Modern conditions instead of de- 
stroying its value as an agricultural country 



112 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

have really increased that value by giving a 
larger market. But — they emphasized again 
and again — hard work is required, concen- 
trated intelligent effort, in order to bring re- 
sults. This is true of every business. The 
days of fifty years ago v^hen almost any slip- 
shod method was bound to bring a profit, have 
passed. Farming has been the last business to 
accept modern business conditions, but the 
time has now come when it must. Waste can 
no longer be tolerated here any more than in 
other forms of business. A man to succeed 
must harbor every resource and use every by- 
product. As one man said, ''So keen is com- 
petition to-day, so slight a margin of profit 
is there between competing houses, that very 
often the man who shows a profit is the man 
ingenious enough to make it from the by-prod- 
ucts which twenty-five years ago were 
spurned.'' 

One speaker spoke of the Chinese and the 
tender care they bestow upon a few hundred 
square feet of land and the results secured from 
this. 

''Our ancestors were both hard workers and 
thrifty,'' said he, "and we must get back to 
their standards. We in the East have been 



THE NEW WAY 113 

spoiled as well as despoiled by the West. We 
have listened to stories of thousand-acre farms, 
steam plows, and million-bushel crops, until 
our own opportunities seem petty by compari- 
son. We have heard of Oregon fruit farms 
until our own fruit doesn't seem worth culti- 
vating. But that's all wrong. You ought to 
realize it when in spite of the million dollar 
crops you find yourselves paying more and 
more every year for your flour. You ought to 
realize it whenever you go to the grain mill 
and pay out your good money for corn that you 
might as well raise yourselves. As for Ore- 
gon apples — don't let them frighten you. If 
nature gives them size and color, she makes 
them pay for it in juice and flavor. They look 
well in boxes, those apples, but the world is 
learning to buy New England apples to eat. 
There isn't a better apple country on the globe 
than New England." 

Good straight talk that, and it had its effect. 
You could see the audience straighten up and 
hold themselves the better for it. Every meet- 
ing was well attended and there was never 
the slightest sign of restlessness in the audi- 
ences, though sometimes the talks lasted nearly 
two hours. 



114 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

In the meanwhile Ruth in her quiet way was 
doing as much as the rest of us to keep up in- 
terest in the undertaking. She made it a point 
to get acquainted with all the farmer wives 
in the neighborhood. She had them up to the 
house in groups and dropped many a word of 
encouragement and gave many a bit of advice 
which came from a full experience. 

"Billy/' she said to me one night, "it's the 
deadly uninspired routine of their lives that's 
killing the women. They cook and sew and 
scrub without a single dream to help them 
along. And that's because the men don't 
dream. If you succeed in rousing the hus- 
bands and sons you'll bring the wives and 
mothers to life, too." 

"That's what we want to do," I said. 

"It shows that it isn't lack of money that 
makes poverty, Billy," she said. "All these 
women have good homes and plenty to eat and 
wear and yet — and yet I honestly believe they 
are poorer than our old friends of the tene- 
ments." 

"We were never so poor in our lives as when 
we lived with plenty to eat and wear in the sub- 
urbs," I reminded her. 

"That's just it," she nodded. "This is the 



THE NEW WAY 115 

same kind of poverty. It comes from the fact 
that for these women Hfe ends with the end of 
each day. They die every time they crawl 
into bed at night. There is never anything for 
them to look forward to on the morrow." 

'Tf we could only make them realize that 
this condition is largely their own fault — " 

"That wouldn't make any difference at all," 
she broke in ; "we must change the conditions. 
Most of our misfortunes are our own fault, 
but that doesn't make them any less misfor- 
tunes. It's another misfortune that our mis- 
fortunes are our own fault. I don't know but 
what that's the worst misfortune of all." 

She was right. It doesn't do much good to 
blame people for their faults. We ourselves, 
after making public our experiences in the sub- 
urbs, received many hard letters from people 
who couldn't see anything in our plight but the 
well deserved consequences of our own folly. 
If we hadn't done this or that, if we had done 
this or that, we were assured that we would 
have come out all right. To be sure. That 
applies to every human being who ever tried to 
live this life. If we were all as wise as Solo- 
mon to start with and lived up to all Solomon's 
precepts, then would come the millennium. But 



ii6 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

we aren't. We all have to learn and in the 
learning we make many mistakes. Then we 
make them again. 

And the man who blames us and lets it go at 
that isn't our friend, and some day is going to 
make a mistake himself. 



CHAPTER IX 

SPRING 

I don't think a winter, in our town, ever 
passed more quickly or more pleasantly than 
this winter. The months flew by like weeks 
and the weeks like days. When the first warm 
melting days came in late April everyone be- 
gan to get impatient. It seemed as though the 
snow would never leave the ground, and many 
didn't wait for this before plotting out their 
crops and digging up samples of soil to send 
to the agricultural school. Seeds were bought 
and tested and farming tools brought out and 
put in order. 

It's good to be in the country in the spring. 
It was my first experience and the change took 
place like a miracle. I saw trees that looked 
as dead as fence posts start to life with the 
stirring sap; I saw little green grass blades 
appear among the brown waste of dead blades ; 
I saw all manner of living things awake and 
creep out of their winter hiding places until the 

117 



ii8 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

earth looked almost as though the resurrection 
trumpet had blown. 

Spring means a great deal more to us farm- 
ers than it does to city folk. She comes like a 
partner returning from a winter vacation, 
takes down the shutters, sweeps the store clean 
and stands at the door ready for business. 
She comes with unlimited capital which is fur- 
nished everyone for the asking. If men will 
have none of it even then she does not stand 
idle, but for the sake of the housewives and 
the children proceeds on her own hook to make 
the world as beautiful as possible ; sprinkles the 
trees with blossoms and perfume, scatters the 
ground with flowers, sweetens the air with 
song. You can't escape her bounty if you 
will. This year, however, she couldn't com- 
plain of lack of cooperation. 

Hardly had the frost fairly left the ground 
when there was an unprecedented demand in 
our town for horses and plows. There were 
not enough to go around. I let Hadley go in 
order to take the many jobs that were offered 
him, but with every plow and horse in the 
neighborhood in use I saw much land that 
would be late for seed. If tangible evidence 
was needed of what the Pioneer Club had al- 



SPRING 119 

ready accomplished it was in this state of af- 
fairs. There had been no difficulty the year 
before. One Sunday Holt and I scoured the 
surrounding towns for men and horses and se- 
cured six teams on the promise of at least 
a week's work for each. They were willing 
enough to come, even though in doing so they 
neglected their own work. It was the old 
story of their being willing for five dollars a 
day cash in hand to jeopardize a future ten. 
However, that was their own lookout and I 
quieted my conscience with the thought that 
if we made as good as we hoped to do the in- 
fluence of this would spread to the neighboring 
towns. They were mighty curious as to what 
was going on. 

''What's got into you people, anyhow?" asked 
one man. 

"We're getting ready for the planting/' I 
said. 

''Well, something must have happened to 
make you so all-fired busy down your way," one 
of them answered. Even among neighboring 
towns our village had a bad reputation. 

I told him about the Pioneer Club and the 
prizes that were being offered. The amount 
made his eyes stick out. 



120 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

"Gee/' he answered, "guess I'll have to move 
down." 

"You're welcome," I said. "Come and bring 
your family." 

We certainly did look like a busy commu- 
nity. Drive along the roads in any direction 
and you'd see acre after acre of upturned land. 
The smell of new earth was in the air and it 
was like tonic even to the passerby. 

During this busy preparatory season Holt 
kept his law office open evenings and it came 
to be a sort of club room. I planned to stay 
down there every evening until eleven and the 
two of us tried to straighten out the difficul- 
ties that arose. One of these was seeing to it 
that every man who showed himself to be in 
earnest had a proper supply of material with 
which to start his crop. We made arrange- 
ments with Moulton and with Gordon the hard- 
ware man to extend reasonable credit to every- 
one even in cases where credit had been 
withdrawn. Our argument that it was wiser 
to help a man get on his feet than keep him 
down was sound on the face of it. 

"These fellows mean business now," I said 
to Gordon, "and if we go on half as well as 
we've begun there won't be a man in this vil- 



SPRING 121 

lage who within a couple of years won't be able 
to pay his bills. It's up to you to do your part. 
Their success is your success. Give them 
credit for everything but patent medicines and 
you won't lose." 

While it was true that in doing this Gor- 
don was choosing the lesser of two evils I re- 
alized that it wasn't exactly fair either to force 
him and a few other merchants to bear the 
burden of financing these men without inter- 
est. But the small farmer is in a bad position. 
When the commercial business house needs 
money it can go to a bank and upon a state- 
ment of its business and its rating obtain 
money and credit on its signature. A small 
farmer has no business rating and can get 
money only upon a mortgage at six per cent., 
which is almost prohibitive. Of course the 
banks can't be blamed for treating with in- 
dividuals in this way but it struck me that 
something might be done about this if ever 
we got the community as a whole firmly bound 
together. The combined security of all the 
land and business in the village ought to mean 
something to a bank. 

In the meantime I was not neglecting my 
own land. I realized that there wasn't much 



122 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

use in preaching the profits of farming unless 
I at least made the attempt to demonstrate it 
on my own acres. While on the one hand I 
was handicapped by lack of practical training, 
it struck me that this would make the experi- 
ment all the more interesting as showing what 
could be done by a man who availed himself 
of the knowledge of others, which, through the 
government bureaus and the State Agricul- 
tural School, was freely offered to everyone. 

Before this series of lectures I don't believe 
any human being ever knew less about farm- 
ing than I did. I hadn't spent even my vaca- 
tions on a farm. I couldn't tell wheat in the 
field from oats. I couldn't tell a squash from 
a pumpkin. I didn't know anything about 
soils, about seeds, about fertilizers, about cul- 
tivation. My mind was a blank on the subject, 
which at least had the advantage of making me 
free of prejudices. 

I don't mean to say that even after the su- 
perficial course of lectures to which I listened 
this winter that I felt myself an authority on 
the subject. I didn't. But on the other hand 
everything that was said sounded so much like 
just plain common sense that I didn't see why 
any fairly intelligent man couldn't put the the- 



SPRING 123 

ories into practice, especially when he had the 
Agricultural School back of him, ready and 
eager to give further advice. 

Take for example the matter of orchards. 
I found on my place some seventy-five apple 
trees all cluttered up with dead limbs. It 
didn't require a farmer to realize that any tree 
was handicapped by such a burden. I took a 
saw and cut out all this dead wood and a little 
later, when the shoots had started, trimmed 
off all those which obviously were useless. 
Then, still following out instructions, I scraped 
the bark on the trunks and whitewashed them. 
This was no more than common sense groom- 
ing, such as one would give live stock. Then, 
I girdled the trunks with burlap to prevent in- 
sects from crawling up to the young leaves. 
After this, I spaded up around the roots so 
that air and water and sunshine could get in. 
Until now the dead sod had matted down into 
a covering that was about as impervious to air 
and moisture as a rubber blanket. 

Hadley watched me with cynical indiffer- 
ence. To him it seemed as foolish to bestow 
all this care upon gnarled old apple trees as it 
would to give the same attention to a full grown 
man that a woman bestows upon an infant. 



124 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

He believed that a tree would grow anyway 
and was outside the province of farming. 

"Only wastin' your time/' he said. "Them 
trees won't never do nothin'.'' 

Perhaps not, but I felt more than repaid in 
seeing the orchard look shipshape instead of 
like a neglected cemetery. 

Earlier in the season I had taken samples 
from a five-acre strip of damp, low-lying land 
at the foot of the hill which was fairly well 
drained, and sent them to the school for 
analysis. I received a report advising me to 
plant potatoes there and a formula for the best 
fertilizer to use. Here again it didn't take a 
man bred on a farm to carry out the simple 
instructions. I had the field plowed as soon 
as the frost was out of the ground, applied my 
fertilizer of acid phosphate, kainit and nitrate 
of soda — so many pounds to the acre — and har- 
rowed it in. It didn't require even ordinary 
intelligence to have this done or to purchase 
Early Norwood, New Queen and Green 
Mountain seed and plant them in rows three 
feet apart and in sets fifteen inches apart. 
Hadley and I did the work — work that any 
day laborer was capable of doing. I reserved 
a small strip for the planting of Early Horn 



SPRING 125 

carrots, Market Model parsnips, Edmands 
beets and Early Milan turnips. These names 
didn't mean anything to me, and I didn't care 
if they didn't. Before the end of the season 
however I wished I had reserved an even 
larger strip for these things. I never ate such 
vegetables in my life. 

I plowed up about an acre back of the barn 
for the garden and emptied upon this the ma- 
nure from the cow barn, working it in well. 
Then I harrowed the ground until it was pul- 
verized almost as fine as dust. According to 
the Professor not half time enough is devoted 
by the average New England farmer to the 
preparation of the soil for his seed. Often- 
times he is content with a shallow plowing and 
a single harrowing. I noticed that Dardoni 
and Tony however knew by instinct enough to 
work their soil thoroughly. They depended a 
great deal on hand labor, because for one rea- 
son they could secure help cheap. Newcomers 
were glad enough to work for them for the ex- 
perience, and the chance it gave them to look 
around for places of their own. However, the 
result was the same and they did their work 
thoroughly. I planted about one-fourth of 
this garden to peas in successive sowings. 



126 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

Here was another simple and obvious advan- 
tage which I found my neighbors until now 
had neglected. They sowed perhaps an early 
and late crop of peas and corn but it never oc- 
curred to them to make three or four plantings 
and many of them didn't even make two. 
When peas and corn were ripe everyone had 
peas and corn but in the intervals no one ex- 
cept Dardoni and his fellows had them at all. 
They were therefore either scarce or a drug on 
the market. Under advice I used Suttons, 
with a few Dwarf Champions. 

Another quarter of the garden I planted to 
beans — some string beans — Plentif uls and Val- 
enties — some wax and Lima beans and a large 
patch of white pea beans for winter. 

Another quarter of the patch I put into 
sweet corn, using for the early varieties Early 
Cory and Peep o' Day; for medium earlies 
Crosby, and for late corn Country Gentleman. 
Among these I put in a few squash seeds, 
Crooknecks and Hubbards. 

The last quarter I used for cucumbers, cab- 
bage, tomatoes and small stuff, such as lettuce, 
pepper grass, radishes, Swiss chard, and beets. 

Now to get all this done within the space of 
a few weeks required hard work. I was up at 



SPRING 127 

half past four and in the field by half past five. 
With an hour out at noon I was in the field 
steadily until six o'clock. Then I ate supper 
and was in bed by eight-thirty so dog-tired I 
could hardly get undressed. And yet I woke 
up at daylight the next morning completely 
rested and eager to be at it again. This was 
the kind of hard work that leaves no after ef- 
fects. I continued to employ Hadley, but with- 
out boasting I honestly believe I accomplished 
each day four times as much as he did. I 
didn't do this by unusual exertion, but merely 
by keeping steadily at it and planning the work 
in a businesslike way. In my thought I kept 
one step ahead of my hands while he always 
kept one step behind and had to wait for his 
head to catch up with him. 

I never felt more alert in body and mind than 
I did this spring. I was used to physical la- 
bor, but I found myself responding with even 
greater vigor now than when I was younger 
and digging for the subway as a day laborer. 
For one thing I had none of the mental strain 
with which I was burdened then. Of course 
I was in a far better position financially and 
everything was going well with my own. 
Dick was making good and the kiddies were 



128 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

as rosy and plump as fall apples. Ruth, too, 
was happier than I had ever seen her, so that 
while I took this new work seriously it was 
with a light-hearted seriousness that added to 
the zest of life. 

In the meantime we were holding a meeting 
of the Pioneers every two weeks in order that 
interest might not flag, and to discuss any dif- 
ficulties that arose. These gatherings were in- 
formal, and as time went on had the effect of 
binding us together into one big family. Some- 
times I spoke and sometimes Holt spoke, and 
twice we had a man down from the school. 
So far as it was possible we tried to prod up 
everyone's pride. We told them that as de- 
scendants of the people who founded this na- 
tion we had a certain responsibility of blood. 
We were still the backbone of this nation, but 
this inheritance didn't amount to anything un- 
less we lived up to it. We tried to impress 
everyone with the fact that other pioneers were 
coming in (and they saw this for themselves) 
and that if we meant to retain our title and 
position it must be by proving ourselves worthy 
of it. We avoided carefully anything which 
might stir up class hatred. 

'The race is open to all," said Holt. 'It's 



SPRING 129 

right that it should be. A man wouldn't have 
much of a horse race if he only allowed his 
own horses to enter — horses he was sure of. 
A victory wouldn't mean anything. It would 
be like betting with yourself. It's only in the 
free-for-all that you get a real race and a real 
victory. We've made a good start and now 
all we have to do is to sit tight and drive hard." 

Holt had a catchy way of talking and al- 
ways succeeded in putting the crowd into good 
humor and also in throwing a glamour of ro- 
mance over everything. We couldn't have had 
a better man. 

But as I said, the greatest good of these 
meetings came in the community idea which 
was fostered. Associating here week after 
week for a common purpose we began to 
feel friendly and intimate with one another. 
Farmers are naturally an independent lot and 
the worse farmers they are the more independ- 
ent they are apt to be. Lack of success in- 
stead of humbling them makes them even 
cockier, as it does for that matter with people 
in any walk of life who have any backbone. 
They find plenty of excuse for their failure 
outside themselves. Newspapers and muck- 
raking magazine articles and politicians fur- 



I30 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

nish them with arguments enough to explain 
how they are being robbed and abused. These 
things sink in deep among farmers when they 
sink in at all, because they have time to think 
them over and digest them. But it sinks into 
them as individuals and not as a body. The 
result is that not only do they become sus- 
picious of the outside world but suspicious of 
one another. It makes them even more pro- 
nounced separate units. Up to a certain point 
this is not only a good thing but the best pos- 
sible thing. It has preserved their individu- 
ality. Organization after organization has 
tried to herd them together and reduce them 
to a mere class so as to drive them in one 
direction for their own selfish ends, but hap- 
pily without result. They won't be driven. 
Even the organizations which have had a less 
sordid interest in the task have failed to hold 
them together for any length of time, which 
in my opinion has saved them from being swal- 
lowed up. 

But this independence is carried to extremes 
in the smaller communities and it was so in 
our town. Every man was suspicious of his 
neighbor. Though engaged in the same 
work and with many interests in common every 



SPRING 131 

man felt himself a competitor, not with the out- 
side world, but with his nearest neighbor. 
They wouldn't pull together on anything. 

We didn't overcome this feeling in a minute 
but we did accomplish a lot towards it even 
during this first summer. In a way this prize 
system might be expected to increase individual 
competition, but even to the end of winning the 
prizes we forced everyone to work together 
which more than made up. 

It wasn't long before we all of us realized 
that we had opened up a field even larger than 
any of us had dreamed. When we saw almost 
two hundred acres spring to life as a result 
of our initial effort ; as we saw front dooryards 
blossom with flower gardens and back door- 
yards become alive with truck gardens; as we 
saw orchard after orchard, which until now had 
been about as sightly as a patch of dead hem- 
locks, step forth trim and neat and full, not of 
dead hopes, but of big promise; as we noted the 
absence of village loafers and grocery store 
hangers-on, we caught an inkling of what a 
power we had set in motion. And the joy of it 
came in the realization that this was no new 
and imported power, but native energy which 
all the while had been here latent. These 



132 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

acres, this labor which had been lying idle, was 
now waking up. It represented thousands of 
dollars when aroused and only so many cents 
when dormant. A man couldn't have come in 
here and bought this plant — houses, barns, 
fields, stock, men, for much less than a million 
dollars at any time, and yet it hadn't been 
worth to those who possessed it what it was 
taxed. Quick with life as it was now it was 
coming to its own. 



CHAPTER X 

RESULTS 

From the moment my seeds began to show 
in tiny sprouts above the ground until the full 
grown produce was safely garnered, I lived 
with a hoe in my hands. Much to Hadley's 
disgust I also kept a hoe in his hands most of 
the time. I didn't allow a weed either in my 
truck garden or my potato patch ever to get 
more than two inches high. Instead of hoe- 
ing once I hoed a half dozen times. The ad- 
vantage of this is not so much in keeping down 
the weeds as it is in stirring up the soil so that 
the earth keeps fresh and alive and porous. 
Hadley was disgusted. 

''Lawd-a-mighty/' he exclaimed, as we 
started for the potato patch with hoes over 
our shoulders for the fourth cultivation, "ye'll 
hoe your stuff to death/' 

"You wait and see the results," I said. 

"Ye b'lieve every darn thing them school 
teachers tell ye?" 

133 



134 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

'Tretty nearly," I said. 

"It's all right for them to preach/' he said, 
''but ril bet a dollar to a doughnut thet they'd 
quit preachin' hoein' mighty quick if ye gave 
them this five acre patch to hoe theirselves." 

But I was satisfied with results at the end 
of the first month. No one could ask for har- 
dier looking plants than I had. But Hadley 
was not convinced even with this visible proof. 

'They've grown spite of ye," he said. "Any- 
how the tarnation bugs will eat 'em up afore 
you're through. Always do." 

Doubtless they would if I had given my per- 
mission, but when I wasn't hoeing I was spray- 
ing with Paris Green. More than this I went 
around with a tin can and knocked off into this 
all those bugs which did succeed in reaching 
maturity. A couple of sprayings a season was 
the most anyone around here ever did. So 
long as the bugs were kept down enough not 
actually to kill the plants most people here- 
about were satisfied. I don't believe an even 
hundred of the pests succeeded in getting a 
square meal off my potatoes. 

Now in all this I insist, and it's evident on 
the face of it, that such attention didn't imply 
on my part any scientific knowledge of farm- 



RESULTS 135 

ing. I did what I was told to do and did it 
thoroughly. I did what it seems to me I should 
have known enough to do even if I hadn't been 
told. You can't eat your cake and have it, 
too; you can't let bugs eat your potatoes and 
have your potatoes, too. It was queer sort of 
reasoning that until now had convinced my 
neighbors that this was possible. They had 
almost fatalistic theories about farming. They 
seemed to think that the most any man could 
do was to plant his seed and then trust to Provi- 
dence for what might result. This pious faith 
in the bounty of the Almighty was fundamen- 
tally of course merely an unconscious excuse 
for their own laziness, but it seems to me it 
really must have been at the root of their 
shiftlessness — an inheritance perhaps. Hadley 
was a fine example of it. I gave up early in 
the season trying to inspire him even with the 
help of the prizes. He did plant a few hills 
of corn but he refused to hoe them more than 
once. 

Now what I did myself, a large part of my 
neighbors were also doing in a more or less 
earnest way. The young men I found were 
doing more than the old men. The latter had 
taken advice in the matter of fertilizers and 



136 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

seeds but it came hard to them to give the 
later attention to their crops that I did. How- 
ever it was possible to see a general and notable 
improvement even in this. The semi-monthly 
meetings did much to spur them on and the no- 
ticeable results which followed their efforts 
also did something more. Some of them re- 
mained skeptical, but both Holt and myself in- 
sisted that they must keep at it until the end 
of the season. We never missed a chance to 
dangle before their eyes the prize money. Holt 
did one clever thing that had a very good ef- 
fect. He secured one hundred crisp new dol- 
lar bills and kept them displayed in the window^ 
of Moulton's grocery store with a sign over 
them which read : 

''Only One of the Ten Prizes." 

The display of so much money caught the 
eye of everyone who passed. More than that 
about everyone in town who was competing 
went down and had a look at it every so often. 
It acted like a tonic to many a man who was 
getting disheartened by the amount of labor in- 
volved in the new system. 

Holt and I made a rough estimate of the 



RESULTS 



m. 



land now under cultivation that last year was 
idle and figured that it amounted to about one 
hundred and eighty acres. In addition to this 
there was of course the land that was always 
farmed to a more or less extent amounting to 
some two hundred acres more. Out of this 
last lot there wasn't an acre that didn't show 
improvement over the year before. 

The new hundred and eighty acres counted 
for a lot more in value than shows in the mere 
statement, because it included gardens for 
nearly everyone in the village and this meant 
an actual saving in cash for every householder 
from the moment the produce began to mature. 
Moulton noted the effect of this when as usual 
he started to bring in early vegetables from 
the city market. He had all he could do to 
get rid of the first lot and after that gave it 
up. No one wanted city vegetables with the 
prospect ahead of vegetables of their own. 
Martin, the local butcher, also noticed the ef- 
fect in a way he didn't like. He was the only 
man in the village who opposed us and he can't 
be blamed, for his meat sales began to fall off 
in June and dropped fifty per cent, during July 
and August. With green peas to be had for 
the picking, followed by string beans, new po- 



138 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

tatoes, green corn, turnips, parsnips, beets, 
shell beans and what not, most people thought 
twice before paying him forty cents a pound 
for rump steak. Personally Fd like to have 
seen him put out of business, for he was a rob- 
ber if ever there was one. He had set me to 
wondering a long while before this why it 
wasn't possible for us to raise our own meat. 
With plenty of corn and hay upon which to 
feed our cattle, with grazing ground for sheep, 
with practically everyone able to keep his own 
pig on ordinary waste I didn't see any reason 
why in the end we shouldn't make use of this 
opportunity. Our forefathers raised whatever 
meat they needed and I believed we could do it 
to-day. This was one of the things I resolved 
to bring up at one of the fall meetings. 

But w^ien crops began to mature we were 
confronted with another and more urgent 
problem. Just as soon as the green peas be- 
gan to come along we realized that w^e were 
face to face with the problem of distribution. 
We had killed the local market, which was de- 
cidedly a good thing. In one sense we hadn't 
killed it, for now every man was supplying 
himself, but we had killed it for our surplus. 
It didn't take me long to see that this would 



RESULTS 139 

be wasted, for all that a majority of the in- 
dividuals themselves might do. The farmers 
were helpless partly because they had no selling 
knowledge and partly because it was almost 
impossible for them to get produce to the mar- 
ket and sell at a profit in small lots. Holt and 
I made a round of the commission merchants 
in town and the very best we could do with 
any of them was at a price forty per cent, be- 
low retail. We figured that transportation 
would eat up another ten per cent, which left 
the man who raised the crop some fifty per 
cent. This was dead wrong on the face of 
it, but we didn't have any time to argue the 
point and it wouldn't have done us any good 
if we had. As we were now situated, fifty 
per cent, was better than nothing. However 
this opened my eyes to some of the reasons why 
in the suburbs we couldn't make both ends 
meet. 

I called a special meeting of the club and told 
the members what I had learned and outlined 
the plan Holt and I had devised to save what 
we could. The situation had come unexpect- 
edly and was due of course to our ignorance. 
We didn't realize it at the time but as it hap- 
pened this crisis was the best thing that could 



140 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

have come about. It forced us on the spur 
of the moment and at the psychological mo- 
ment into a plan that promised to develop big 
things in the end ; the cooperative selling plan. 
I proposed that every member of the club 
should gather early each morning such things 
as were fit for the market over what he couldn't 
use himself and bring them to my barn. There 
the produce would be measured and sorted and 
each man given a credit slip. A committee 
of three was to be appointed by the club to over- 
see without pay this work for a week. The 
committee would hire a team to transport the 
goods to the early train which left at five fif- 
teen. At the end of each week an accounting 
would be made, the cost of transportation de- 
ducted and profits distributed pro rata. I of- 
fered to look after the bookkeeping myself if 
the club so desired and at the next meeting this 
task was delegated to me. 

Now it is possible that in advance of the 
present urgent situation which demanded that 
they accept this or nothing, a minority at least 
might have viewed this scheme with suspicion. 
They were not used to doing things in a body 
and the novelty of it, like all novelties, might 
have frightened them. As it was, the plan 



RESULTS 



141 



was received with instant enthusiasm and 
when put to a vote carried without a single 
dissenting voice. Anyway if a man disap- 
proved all he had to do was not to bring; in his 
produce. The action of the club didn't bind 
a man to anything except to abide by results if 
he chose to contribute his stuff. 

We appointed three men to appear at my 
barn at four o'clock the next morning. They 
turned up on time and by four-fifteen the 
produce began to arrive. Everyone brought 
what he had, whether it was a bushel of sweet 
corn, a peck of beans, a dozen heads of lettuce, 
a half dozen cucumbers or a barrel of apples 
or potatoes. In most cases the individual lots 
didn't amount to much but collectively we made 
a good showing that first morning. We had 
enough to fill a two horse load. I went to the 
station and supervised the loading myself and 
then went on to the market with it. Barnes, 
the commission man, looked it over and ad- 
mitted that he was well pleased on his part with 
the venture. At the end of the first week I 
received a check for four hundred and eighty- 
three dollars and sixty-five cents — not in itself 
a large amount or as much as it should have 
been, but when considered as money, a large 



142 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

per cent, of which would otherwise have gone 
to waste, a creditable showing. 

And really the working out of the scheme 
as it continued from week to week was won- 
derfully simple. There was nothing either dif- 
ficult or complicated about it. The three men 
appointed every week gave about two hours 
of their time for six days which in no way 
interfered with their farm duties. They all 
looked upon their selection as an honor and 
rather enjoyed their position. 

Nor was my part of it burdensome. I re- 
ceived an itemized accounting from Barnes and 
had nothing to do but divide these items as 
the dated credit slips were produced. I didn't 
even have to do that, for Ruth did the figuring 
herself, Before the end of the season we 
found we had handled thirty-eight hundred 
dollars, but this included the apple and potato 
crop which went through us. And there 
wasn't a single kick or complaint heard during 
the whole business. 

In the meantime, as the end of the season 
approached, the matter of the prize distribu- 
tion loomed big. I wanted to make the most 
of that event. I wanted it to be a big spec- 
tacular finish that would cling in the minds 



RESULTS 143 

of all during the ensuing winter. The com- 
mittee held several meetings to discuss the best 
way of doing this and we finally hit upon 
the idea of an old-time country fair. There 
hadn't been one in town for twenty years be- 
cause the last ones held had degenerated into 
nothing but two-cent horse races in which the 
prizes had all been carried off by semi-profes- 
sionals. The chief objection to the plan was 
the lack of fair grounds. The old society had 
gone into bankruptcy and sold off what prop- 
erty it had and the grounds had since then 
grown up to scrub pine. Ruth solved the diffi- 
culty by suggesting that we go back again to 
the early days for our idea. Originally the 
fairs were held on the village green. In fact, 
in parts of New England they still are to- 
day. Her idea was to revive this custom in 
our town. 

The idea had several advantages, not the 
least of which was that it incurred no expense, 
and met with instant approval. We appointed 
a committee to look after the details, a second 
committee to arrange a field day for the young- 
sters, and a third committee with Ruth at its 
head to arrange some sort of entertainment for 
the women. 



144 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



''You mustn't leave them out/' Ruth insisted. 
''They play a more important part in this work 
than you imagine." 

We had arranged with the Agricultural 
School to send down men to act as judges so 
that everything should be judged impartially. 
A man had come down just before the haying 
season and had overseen the weighing on the 
town scales of all hay entered for the compe- 
tition. Quality and quantity were the two 
things taken into account for the best crop on 
land already used for that purpose, while the 
prize for the best crop on reclaimed land re- 
quired a somewhat nicer judgment. The na- 
ture of the land here had to be considered. 
When the expert had completed his w^ork he 
made his report and placed it in a sealed en- 
velope which was not to be opened until the 
public award. 

This same method was used in making the 
awards for the most notable improvement in 
orchards, for the best corn crop and the best 
potato crop. As for the other prizes the com- 
mittee itself acted as judges. The results here 
were a matter of self-evident facts. In the 
live stock competition each man was required 
to show a receipted bill for all money expended 



RESULTS 145 

and a record of some sort for all money re- 
ceived. The garden competition had to be 
judged in a more general way, as it was ob- 
served by the committee during the entire 
season. I had put a good deal of time into 
this myself and it had been a genuine pleasure. 
There was hardly a family in the village who 
didn't have a garden of some sort that year, 
for even those who didn't intend to compete 
caught the contagion and planted something. 
I wish there had been some way of computing 
the saving in cash that resulted from this alone. 
It certainly amounted to a good many times 
the money which had inspired the movement. 
It seems almost impossible of belief that to 
many residents of this country village the rais- 
ing of their own green stuff was a decided 
novelty. But such is the fact. With a man 
coming daily to the door, as until this season 
Tony and others had done, with peas, lettuce, 
corn, cucumbers and what not, people had 
bought of him as a matter of convenience. It 
had cost them only a little at a time and they 
hadn't realized to how much the sum total 
amounted. 

I know that Ruth and I found a big differ- 
ence in our household expenses once the garden 



146 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

began to bear. Not only this but we did away 
with meat almost entirely and never lived so 
well in our lives. In addition to what I used 
myself I loaded down Dick's machine every 
morning with such stuff as couldn't be put 
away for winter use, to be distributed among 
members of the gang — among families with 
children or those temporarily in hard luck 
through sickness. Moulton was certainly mis- 
taken when he had prophesied that it would 
cost me more to raise than buy my own vege- 
tables. But he hadn't planned on any such 
modern methods as I and the whole village 
used that season. 

As the day for the fair grew nearer the 
town became on edge with excitement. Here 
was a holiday which appealed to everyone, 
whether farmer or not. It brought the whole 
village together as a unit. I was surprised to 
find how much local spirit really existed be- 
low all the apparent indifference. I found 
there wasn't a man or woman who didn't have 
some town pride, however slight. The trouble 
was that they seldom had an opportunity to 
express it. Holt kept up a running fire of com- 
ment in the local paper, which was glad to give 



RESULTS 147 

us all the space we wished. It made the most 
readable and inexpensive copy they had re- 
ceived for a long time. We also got out post- 
ers and distributed them among the neighbor- 
ing towns, bidding everyone come as guests of 
the village. Every merchant decorated his 
store a week in advance and the Woodmen's 
band in anticipation of the event practiced new 
pieces every night. 

Ruth secured the town hall for the women 
and arranged there for an exhibition of New 
England cooking, preserving and needle work, 
which instantly gave the women an active in- 
terest in the undertaking. She also arranged 
to serve here a free lunch of coffee, sandwiches 
and cakes to out-of-town visitors. Her com- 
mittee decorated the interior of the old build- 
ing with wild flowers and flowers from the 
home gardens, with a background of ever- 
greens gathered by the small boys. 

We received requests for street privileges 
from a number of fakirs and sold these for 
enough to purchase settees to go around the 
band stand. We used some care however in 
giving out our permits and barred all gam- 
bles of whatever kind. About a dozen came 
into town the day before and erected their 



148 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

booths which gave the village still more of a 
holiday aspect. That night there wasn't a live- 
lier village in the State. It was so full of an- 
ticipation that I don't believe more than half 
the population got their full night's sleep for the 
first time in twenty years. 

"Are we dead yet?" demanded Holt of Ruth 
as he prepared to leave us long after midnight 
and after being up since four a. m. 

"Some of you will be if you don't go right 
home this minute and get some sleep," she an- 
swered. 



CHAPTER XI 

A GREAT DAY 

The morning of October first dawned cool 
and clear with just frost enough in the air to 
make everyone feel as fit as a fighting cock. 
As early as seven o'clock carriage loads of peo- 
ple passed my house from the neighboring vil- 
lages. Old men and young came, women and 
children, glad of an excuse no matter how slight 
to journey to a common meeting place and 
see and be seen. They came from as far 
away as twenty miles and people who had 
not met for ten years took this opportunity 
to visit with one another. Former residents, 
friends of present residents and total strangers 
poured into town, obeying the instinct to herd 
together for a day. The whole village kept 
open house and so far as it was possible we 
tried to have everything free — to act as a town 
as hosts. I for my part extended a general 
invitation to the gang and all my old friends 
from Little Italy and spread a big table in the 

149 



I50 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

barn for them because there wasn't room in 
the house. As many as seventy-five women 
and children came in the afternoon, while that 
evening about the whole gang came along. 
They pretty nearly ate us out of house and home 
but I had a big bonfire built in the yard and in 
this they roasted apples and potatoes when 
everything else was gone. 

The prize award was set for eleven o'clock 
and for an hour before the band gave a con- 
cert. At the conclusion of this I estimated 
that fully nine hundred people were gathered 
around the band stand. It was as intense and 
excited a gathering as you ever saw. Not an 
inkling of who had won the prizes leaked out 
although in most cases the general discussion 
and known facts had narrowed the possibilities 
down to a half dozen in each class. I myself 
didn't know the winners except in the cases 
where I acted as judge. When the band fin- 
ished its programme with ^'America" and Holt 
and the committee and the judges from the 
Agricultural School who were present as 
guests, and myself stepped to the platform you 
could have heard a pin drop. As president of 
the club it was my duty to make a brief speech 
and in this I outlined for the benefit of stran- 



A GREAT DAY 151 

gers present the object of the club, the money 
that had been offered, what had been accom- 
phshed and on what basis the awards were to 
be made. 

"It seems to me," I said at the end, "that 
every man and woman and boy who is a mem- 
ber of this ckib ought to feel that he has won 
something whether he draws a money prize or 
not." 

This was greeted with noisy cheering which 
it did my heart good to hear. 

"Every one of you who planted a seed and 
cared for it has reaped the reward of seeing 
it multiply at a rate possible in no other busi- 
ness. Nature is the grand prize giver. 
Every farmer ought to consider himself a part- 
ner with Nature — with God. Men give you for 
the use of a dollar for one year four cents, pos- 
sibly five or six cents ; Nature gives us for a dol- 
lar's worth of seed as high as a thousand and 
two thousand per cent. There isn't a family 
in this village who planted a garden last spring 
who hasn't been paid by Nature in produce 
representing good hard cash the wages of a 
skilled artisan. We've had all we wanted to 
eat, some of us have put away enough for the 
winter and over and above that we have sold 



152 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

in garden stuff alone thirty-eight hundred dol- 
lars' worth. And that doesn't represent the 
sum total of our products by a good deal. So 
I insist that we've all won richer prizes than 
any offered here to-day. And with the knowl- 
edge we've gained this year I look to see this 
result doubled next year. I look to see our 
farms grow better and better with good care ; I 
look to see our orchards improve ; I look to see 
us raise all our own beef and mutton and pork 
and the grain to feed the stock upon. I look 
to see us do all our hardy ancestors did and 
with opportunities such as they never dreamed 
of wax so prosperous that men in the business 
world outside will be forced to reckon with us 
and give us the position that is our right — 
abreast of the leaders in the productive enter- 
prises of the world. This bit of extra money 
here, in spite of all that Mr. Holt would have 
us believe, doesn't represent our goal. We've 
attained that already, and this is only just so 
much more pin money. We've proven as in- 
dividuals, we've proven as a club, we've proven 
as a town, that farming can be made to pay. 
To prove that is to have received our pay." 

I didn't want any soreness left as a result 
of disappointed hopes and so when I heard my 



A GREAT DAY 153 

words received with shouts and handclapping 
and smihng faces I was very glad. I reached 
for the first sealed envelop and tore it open. 
The noise subsided until you could have heard 
a pin drop. 

"For the best crop of hay on one acre of 
fresh broken land the prize is one hundred 
dollars in cash. It gives me pleasure to an- 
nounce that this has been awarded to Horatio 
L. Harrison." 

I saw Harrison's face. It went white, then 
red. A good many other faces went white, 
too, and for a second there was an ominous 
silence. Then Holt sprang to the front of the 
platform. 

''Fellow citizens," he shouted, ''let's give 
three cheers for Harrison. Now — hurrah!" 

Perhaps fifty voices joined him. At the 
second hurrah a hundred came in, while at 
the third the whole crowd let themselves loose 
in a fashion that was good to hear. 

"Tiger," shouted Holt. 

And it came full throated from nine hun- 
dred people. Then someone called for Har- 
rison — he was a young man of thirty — and 
before he could escape he had been pushed to 
the platform. Holt seized an arm and drew 



154 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

him up while a dozen others boosted him. He 
faced the crowd an instant and bowed. I 
handed him his money in greenbacks and he 
ducked out of sight. 

I took up the second envelop and opened it. 

*'For the best crop of hay on an acre of land 
already used as hay land the prize is seventy- 
five dollars. This has been awarded to Seth 
Edgar Lovejoy.'' 

Love joy was a man of sixty and one of those 
who had followed the instructions of the ag- 
ricultural expert in the matter of proper fer- 
tilization with constant grumbling. I think 
his idea had been to prove what a tarnation 
fool the expert was. In spite of this however 
he had succeeded in raising a ton and three- 
quarters of hay on an acre that last year had 
vielded him less than one ton. I was more 
than glad therefore for this award as it left 
him nothing more to say. At my announce- 
ment the younger men cheered lustily and de- 
manded a speech from him — calling him by 
his nick-name Killjoy. 

"Tell us how ye done it in spite of yerself," 
yelled one man. 

Lovejoy, much against his will, was forced 
to the platform, Holt dragging him up as he 



A GREAT DAY 155 

had Harrison. He faced the crowd a second 
in a daze. 

"I dunno/' he muttered, ''it's th' only piece 
of luck I ever hed/' 

''Not luck," broke in Holt. "Science and 
hard work did it. Three cheers for Lovejoy 
who wasn't too old to learn." 

They were given good naturedly and I 
opened the third envelop. 

"Prize of one hundred dollars for the best 
crop of corn on an acre of land. This has 
been awarded to George A. Wentworth." 

Everyone expected this. Wentworth was a 
lad of eighteen who had devoted his whole time 
to this one acre of corn and had watched over 
every stalk of it like a widow with one child. 
Where ordinarily twenty bushels to the acre 
was considered a fair crop about here, he had 
reaped thirty-seven — an increase of almost 
one hundred per cent. I had watched the boy 
all summer long. He was the type of young 
man we needed here abouts. He was earnest, 
industrious and with ambition to make a good 
living. His father had a farm of some sev- 
enty acres which wasn't more than forty per 
cent, efficient and I hoped to see the boy come 
into possession of it. He had confided in 



156 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

me that if he won a prize he was going to buy 
a couple of acres of his father. The selection 
was popular and he was given a great ova- 
tion. He was the only man so far who was 
able to reach the platform unaided but per- 
haps he had learned from the previous exam- 
ples the uselessness of protest. Those who 
hadn't won were anxious to get as much sport 
as possible out of those who had. Holt seized 
his arm and addressed the crowd. 

"Here's the type of boy who's going to be 
one of the big men of this town some day," he 
said. '^And it's going to mean something to 
be a big man in this town, for this is going 
to be a big town. Three cheers for the boy 
who knows enough to stay East. Now — let 
'em out!" 

Holt was proving that a college education 
was good for one thing at least ; it taught him 
how to get noise out of a crowd. Leaning 
over the rail with his two fists clenched and 
his arms swinging he looked as though he were 
forcing every man to shout in spite of him- 
self. I know I joined in this time and the 
sedate committee back of me clapped their 
hands noisily. As for Dick and Ruth they 
stood up on their seats and shouted, looking 



A GREAT DAY 157 

straight into Holt's eyes as though hypno- 
tized. I handed Wentworth his crisp new 
bills and saw that there were tears in his eyes. 
It certainly does stir a man to hear eight or 
nine hundred people shouting his name as 
these people did. 

The fourth envelop contained the name of 
the winner of the best house garden. Seventy- 
five dollars was the prize. I had largely to 
do with this selection. I waited until there 
was a dead silence and then announced: 'Tt 
gives me great pleasure to report that this 
prize has been awarded to Mrs. Lydia A. Cum- 
berland.^' 

I think this came as a surprise, for nearly 
every man in the village had considered himself 
a possible winner in this event. My own gar- 
den approached the nearest of anyone's to hers 
and in the matter of the amount raised really 
excelled Mrs. Cumberland's. However I was 
of course automatically barred from the com- 
petition, owing to my position as judge. Mrs. 
Cumberland had planted about a half acre in 
the rear of her house. This soil was naturally 
rich and she had bestowed infinite pains upon 
her plants. She was a widow with two chil- 
dren and had supplied her own table out of 



158 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

the produce, put up in glass jars almost enough 
vegetables to last her through the winter and 
made a few dollars' profit in cash besides. I 
particularly wished to encourage this practice 
of putting up our own vegetables for winter use 
and I had brought here with me a sample jar of 
each vegetable. When the cheering subsided 
I held up a jar of peas. 

''Look at them/' I said. 

Then I did the same with a jar of string 
beans, a jar of turnips, of squash, of pickled 
small beets. Each exhibition was greeted with 
cheering. 

In the meanwhile Holt had found Mrs. Cum- 
berland, and with her arm through his was 
escorting her up the steps to the platform. 
She was a dear, lovable lady of fifty with shy, 
gentle manners that won everyone's heart. 
As she approached, every man including the 
band rose to his feet and faced her standing. 

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she choked. 

Holt led her to a position in front of the 
crowd. 

''The mother of our future pioneers — a pio- 
neer herself," he said with fine feeling; 

Then without any prompting on his part the 
crowd let itself loose. She took out a little 



A GREAT DAY 159 

white handkerchief and waved it a second. 
Then she pressed it to her eyes and shied back, 
and Holt stepping in front of her shielded her 
from further view of the audience. 

It was fine — fine. I don't know what there 
is about such little incidents to so touch the 
heart of a gathering of men and women but 
I do know they are mighty good for men and 
women. There wasn't a person there who 
wasn't left mellowed and almost hallowed by 
those few tense seconds. In and of itself and 
apart from all else we had done, this was worth 
all our labor. It sweetened the whole of us 
and left us with a finer human feeling. 

The prize for the best market garden went to 
Higginbotham and the prize for the best flower 
garden went to Mildred Cunningham, the min- 
ister's daughter. You ought to have seen the 
pride with which Cunningham escorted the 
girl to the platform. The man since the in- 
ception of the movement had really done what 
he could to help us both in his sermons and his 
rounds of the parish. But to my mind the 
little girl had done more than he. I'd give 
more any time for a person who actually gets 
into a forward movement than one who merely 
talks about it. She had kept half the sick peo- 



i6o NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

pie of the village supplied with posies all sum- 
mer long. 

The seventh envelop contained the winner 
of the prize for the best potato crop — one hun- 
dred dollars. I hadn't any idea whom the Ag- 
ricultural School experts had decided upon. I 
tore open the envelop and read automatically as 
follows : 

'Tor the best crop of potatoes raised upon 
an acre of land — one hundred dollars. It 
gives me great pleasure to announce as the 
winner — '' 

Then I stopped. I couldn't believe my own 
eyes. The name which followed was my own. 

"Go on/' someone yelled impatiently. 

"I think there must be some mistake," I said, 
turning to the judge. "I didn't consider my- 
self a competitor." 

''Name! Name!" came a chorus. 

"Name !" insisted Holt. 

I turned to the crowd. 

"The name is William Carleton," I said, 
"But I don't feel—" 

I didn't get any farther. The crowd began 
to cheer and Holt stepped forward to tgg them 
on. When the clamor died down a little, Holt 
seized my arm. "Ladies and gentlemen," he 



A GREAT DAY i6i 

announced, "Mr. William Carleton — a farmer 
from the city but now a citizen of the farm. 
He's the greatest pioneer of us all. IVe seen 
his potato field and watched him care for it 
until I almost wished I was a potato. He's 
done everything except make feather beds for 
'em and tuck 'em in at night. Three cheers 
more for Pioneer Carleton." 

As soon as I could get my voice I responded. 

*T'm glad of the honor," I said, "I don't 
remember anything which has ever made me 
feel prouder. I shall always remember this. 
But, the hundred dollars I want to turn back 
right here to the Pioneer Club." 

It was a minute or two after I had torn open 
the eighth envelop before I could make myself 
heard. This was a prize of one hundred dol- 
lars for the largest return from chickens ac- 
cording to capital invested. This went to Guy 
Holborne, who had invested eighteen dollars 
for six Plymouth Rocks with a rooster, five 
dollars in eggs to set and three dollars in mis- 
cellaneous expenses. He had sold five dollars' 
worth of eggs up to date and had sixty fine 
pullets worth seventy-five cents a piece ready 
for the market. He had fed his chickens 
largely on waste collected from his neighbors. 



1 62 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

The prize for the largest return from cows 
according to capital invested went to Ebenezer 
Blunt, the prize for the largest return from 
pigs to Arthur Libby and the prize for the 
most notable improvement in an old orchard 
was divided between Henderson and Talbot, 
two of our largest land owners. They fol- 
lowed my example and turned the money back 
to the Pioneer Club. 

As the last announcement was made Holt 
roused the band and they played ''America," 
everyone standing. 

The athletic events under Dick's direction 
followed and kept the crowd amused until din- 
ner time. During the afternoon the fakirs did 
a brisk business while the town hall was packed 
until dark. A goodly number of automobiles 
loaded with city folks anxious to see an old- 
fashioned country fair came and went, adding 
to the general holiday atmosphere. 

It was late that night before I really had a 
chance to talk over things with Ruth. 

''Well,'' I said when we w^ere alone, "how 
did it go?" 

"Don't see how it could have gone any bet- 
ter," she answered. 



A GREAT DAY 163 

'That was a great move of Holt's in leading 
the cheering/' I said. 

"Fine! Fine!" 

''Think the decisions left any hard feel- 
ings ?" 

"Only the usual per cent., Billy/' she an- 
swered, "and they won't last. I heard most 
of them talking about what they were going to 
'do next year/' 
'"That's the stuff," I said. 

"You see they had worked out the results 
pretty well for themselves before the announce- 
ment. No; it has been a success — a success 
from beginning to end." 

"And the women?" 

"There isn't one who isn't going to bed to- 
night tired and happy." 

"It isn't unusual for them to go to bed tired," 
I said. 

She nodded. 

"But you can be tired in twenty different 
ways," she said. "And this is the kind of tired 
that's good for them." 



CHAPTER XII 

NEW VENTURES 

It's natural to be over optimistic in the first 
flush of success in a new venture, but in this 
case there was no reaction. Outside of the 
financial success the experiment had been for 
every member of the club, which meant prac- 
tically every member of the village, our most 
notable achievement had been in rousing the 
community spirit. We had all got together in 
a fashion that distinguished us from our 
neighboring towns. People from outside be- 
gan to speak of us residents of Brewster as 
Brewsterites, which to my mind was signifi- 
cant. If our prize system hadn't accomplished 
any more than this it had been worth while. 
This was just the spirit we wanted as a basis 
for working out more in detail our pioneer 
idea. Ruth and I hadn't forgotten our lesson 
from the pioneers of Little Italy, that half the 
secret of earning more money is to save more 
money, and that to do this means a simpler 

164 



NEW VENTURES 165 

standard of living. This was one of the 
things that I had talked over with Holt and 
Barclay and the committee with the result of 
a hearty endorsement from Holt, a mild en- 
dorsement from Barclay, and an agreement 
from the committee not to oppose. They all 
admitted anyway that something must be done 
to keep interest alive during the long winter 
months. 

Now I had no definite plan in mind beyond 
a vague notion to rouse if possible an interest 
in the romantic lives of our ancestors — to 
bring home to those of to-day the possibility of 
making our own lives just as romantic and in- 
dependent and venturesome. Whatever we 
accomplished grew out of talks between Holt, 
Ruth and myself, but to a still larger degree 
out of incidents that grew out of the under- 
taking itself. Our whole enterprise developed 
from within itself. We planned nothing ex- 
cept along general lines and forced nothing. 

For example, here is one thing that turned 
up unexpectedly. Holt came to me one day 
and said he had run across a moving picture 
man who was in town with a view to installins: 
a moving picture show. The latter had been 
to Moulton, who owned the opera house be- 



1 66 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

neath which his store was located, and had tried 
to make a bargain with him to rent the hall. 

''Why in thunder don't we do it ourselves ?" 
was Holt's question to me. 

"As a personal business venture?'' I asked. 

"As a business venture for the club," he an- 
swered. "There's no doubt but what a moving 
picture show is going to be started here sooner 
or later. You can't prevent it. If an out- 
sider conducts the business he carries off the 
good money of our members, he forces us to 
buck against a rival interest and he runs any 
old films he chooses. If we run it ourselves 
we can make it part of our winter's amuse- 
ment, select our films, and turn back into the 
club treasury everything over running ex- 
penses." 

"And if we lose?" 

"We can't lose. Wouldn't do any harm to 
try it anyway, and if we do lose it's a safe bet 
it would scare off any outsider from ever try- 
ing it." 

Holt's argument seemed sound. The capi- 
tal required was not much; enough to pay the 
rent of the hall which we had to hire once in 
two weeks anyway and the price of installing 
the plant which was only a matter of a few 



NEW VENTURES 167 

hundred dollars. But the most attractive fea- 
ture was the opportunity this would give us to 
select films that would serve our ends — picture 
plays of the landing of the Pilgrims, Indian 
fights and what not to say nothing of purely 
educational features on plant growing, proper 
sanitation and so on. Then the negative side 
was also worth something — the chance to cut 
out the plays that might have an unwholesome 
tendency. The more I thought of this the bet- 
ter the idea seemed, so that I offered to advance 
the necessary capital without interest to be paid 
back out of the profits — if any there were. 

We put the matter before the club at the 
next semi-monthly meeting and the idea re- 
ceived enthusiastic endorsement, as it natu- 
rally might be expected to do when it prom- 
ised amusement, a possible profit and no risk. 
Whereupon we closed with Moulton and opened 
negotiations with a leading film house for the 
lease of a machine. Holt undertook the busi- 
ness management of the enterprise and noth- 
ing could have suited him better. He was a 
born publicity man. 

"Fm going to make the neighboring towns 
pay most of the running expenses," he de- 
clared. 



1 68 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

"How?'' I inquired. 

'*You wait and see/' 

I waited and did see. He ran two shows a 
week — one on Wednesday which he called Pio- 
neer Club night, and one on Saturday evening. 
The films for both were identical but for the 
Wednesday night show he charged members 
of the Pioneer Club only five cents' admission 
with the result that they filled every available 
seat in the hall. The Saturday night show 
cost ten cents and being a repetition of the 
first naturally didn't attract but a few of the 
members. But he plastered the neighboring 
towns within a radius of ten miles with green 
handbills that again filled his hall. He let him- 
self loose on these and had as much fun as a 
schoolboy out of his attempts to whet curi- 
osity. 

We held our semi-monthly meetings on two 
of the four Wednesday nights and on this oc- 
casion had one or more of the films as a free 
entertainment following the business meeting. 
It was in connection with this that we also in- 
augurated our pioneer talks. 

At the beginning Holt and I were the speak- 
ers, although later as our treasury grew fat 
with the proceeds of our picture show we used 



NEW VENTURES 169 

some of the money to bring in lyceum lecturers 
and at least once a month some specialist from 
the Agricultural School. Our subjects were 
limited either to American pioneer history of 
the East or to practical talks on farming. One 
thing we insisted upon was that they must be 
put into popular and entertaining form. For 
instance, I in my first talk had as my subject 
''Early Tillers of New England Soil.'' I spent 
a good deal of time at the city public library 
in looking up my material, picking out inter- 
esting facts about the nature of the soil at that 
time, the implements in use, the difficulties that 
had to be overcome and the results obtained. 
I put a good deal of emphasis on the difficulties 
as compared with those of to-day and yet 
pointed out how cheerfully the early settlers 
went at their task because they worked at it 
in freedom. In connection with this we ran 
a film that was supposed to describe the de- 
parture of the Pilgrims from England and 
their landing in this country. It was wonder- 
fully vivid and made it seem almost like an 
event of yesterday. 

Holt treated in much the same fashion 
"The Fighting Spirit of Our Ancestors." I 
tell 3^ou he made a warrior of every man in the 



170 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



audience before he was through and a war- 
rior's mother of every woman. We ran with 
this a reahstic Indian fight film. 

At another talk Ruth spoke on the "Women 
of Early New England/' describing their 
lives and their work and what the women of 
to-day owed to them. ''The Courtship of 
Miles Standish/' was the film we used with 
this and it was so popular that it led later on to 
the acting of a series of tableaux founded on 
Longfellow's poem. This was the big social 
event of the winter, coming at Christmas time 
and ending with a dance. 

The Lyceum speakers took up various phases 
of New England life in a more scholarly fash- 
ion, and all were well received. But the seri- 
ous work of the winter came with the lecturers 
from the Agricultural School who considered 
the subject of live stock in New England — an 
interesting question if not a particularly ro- 
mantic one. They discussed the matter of 
why we should raise our own meats instead 
of importing them from the West. And really, 
for a community like ours, there didn't seem 
to be anything at all to be said against the 
proposition. If there were obvious objections 
to keeping chickens, pigs, and cows in a tene- 



NEW VENTURES 



171 



ment, they certainly didn't hold here. And 
yet there hadn't been a steer raised for meat 
in our town for twenty-five years. We didn't 
even raise the corn to feed our cows on. Even 
pigs were scarce, while eggs and chickens were 
actually bought to a large extent from the city 
market. On the face of it nothing could seem 
more absurd. With land enough and labor 
enough to supply ourselves we allowed our- 
selves to be supplied from land several thou- 
sand miles away. And it wasn't because we 
got our goods cheaper. We paid prices that 
almost drove us into bankruptcy. We might 
with as much logic have imported our water. 
Now the only explanation of this that any- 
one could see was that convenience, which is 
another word for laziness, had led us into the 
habit and this habit had become so fixed that 
it now seemed like a necessity. Of course it 
wasn't argued that we could raise meat on any 
such wholesale scale as is done in the West 
where the plains furnish free fodder, or in the 
corn belt where corn could be raised at a price 
for stock feeding impossible to us. But rais- 
ing enough to supply at least the home mar- 
ket didn't involve those conditions. There 
wasn't a man with a farm who couldn't feed 



172 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



a portion of his hay and corn to beef to 
better advantage than he could sell it, who 
didn't have grazing land available for that pur- 
pose that at present was only growing up to 
useless small growth. Even when balanced 
against the question of whether the feed 
couldn't at a better profit be turned into milk, 
a field was still left open for beef enough to 
supply the local market. 

Another lecturer took up the matter of sheep 
raising. It wasn't so very long ago that every 
farmer in New England had a small flock of 
sheep as much as a matter of course as he had 
a horse. To-day with the price of mutton 
and lamb soaring, with wool at a premium, a 
flock of sheep on a New England farm is a cu- 
riosity. 

Now if there were dearth of land, if the ad- 
vancing population from the cities had sent 
up real estate values this would be a perfectly 
natural result. But the exact opposite is 
the case. The deserted farms sprinkled all 
through New England, farms left to grow up 
to waste timber, farms on the market for a 
song, would seem to prove that much. Idle 
pasture land around such farms as are worked 
further disproves that it isn't lack of land that 



NEW VENTURES 173 

has brought this about. Then what in Heav- 
en^s name is the cause of this wasted oppor- 
tunity ? 

I can answer only so far as I studied the men 
about me. The opening of the big western 
grazing fields did at first have its effect in send- 
ing down eastern values of live stock. Thou- 
sands of sheep fed by nature permitted a price 
even with a terrible waste, even with ex- 
pensive marketing, that discouraged eastern 
farmers. But that was twenty-five years and 
more ago. To-day prices are different and 
should again encourage eastern stock raising 
at least for local markets. But in the mean- 
while our eastern farmers have fallen out of 
the habit. It has become a proverb that sheep 
don't pay — just as, for that matter, it has be- 
come a proverb that chickens don't pay, cattle 
don't pay, pigs don't pay, hay don't pay or, in 
brief and as Hadley was constantly remind- 
ing me, ''Nothin' don't pay." He spoke with 
more truth than he thought when he said that. 
It's a fact that "nothin' don't pay," but every- 
thing else does pay. 

Now as the Agricultural School expert in- 
sisted, a flock of one hundred sheep carefully 
looked after in the East can be made worth as 



174 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

much as five hundred or a thousand half neg- 
lected on the western plains. The only condi- 
tion modern methods impose on modern farm- 
ers is that such things as are raised shall be 
cared for. There must be no waste. That is 
doing nothing more than carry to the farm 
the principles which govern all modern busi- 
nesses. The day of allowing sheep, cattle, 
chickens, or produce to care for themselves 
and taking what is left, has passed. The only 
unfortunate feature of this new system is that 
it involves on the part of the farmer hard work. 
In getting out of the habit of raising such 
things as are raised to-day in a big way in the 
West, the New England farmer has gotten out 
of the habit of hard work. That's the gos- 
pel truth in a nut-shell as it was shown up in 
our town. With the pioneer movement shifted 
to the West, all the pioneer qualities went with 
it. Deserted farms don't necessarily mean 
bad farm lands; they mean bad farmers, lazy 
farmers, uninspired farmers. Once again I 
find myself getting back to this as a funda- 
mental truth and once again I bring up as 
proof the fact that the minute you place upon 
these acres an old-world pioneer like Dardoni 
you see the land spring to life as by magic. 



NEW VENTURES 175 

Pigs and chickens, how to select the stock, 
how to feed them and house them were treated 
in the same manner by other speakers from 
the school. I was surprised in how scientific 
a manner this business has been worked out. 
Take for example the matter of the by-product, 
manure. One speaker made the statement — 
it sounded rash enough but he assured us that 
it was based on statistics — that the annual loss 
in America through the incompetent handling 
of barnyard dressing, amounted to six hundred 
million dollars. This represents just so much 
wasted nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash. 
One speaker presented a table showing the 
value in dollars and cents of dressing per one 
thousand pounds, live weight. Sheep produce 
thirty-four and one-tenth pounds per day, val- 
ued at twenty-six dollars a year; calves sixty- 
seven and eight-tenths, valued at twenty-four 
dollars a year; pigs eighty-three and six- 
tenths, valued at sixty dollars a year; cows 
seventy-four and one-tenth pounds, valued at 
twenty-nine dollars and twenty-seven cents a 
year; horses forty-eight and eight-tenths 
pounds, valued at twenty-seven dollars and 
seventy-four cents a year. And this is merely 
a by-product. 



176 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

I tell you those figures did us good. Those 
of us who were in the habit of holding our 
breath in awe at mention of the capitaliza- 
tion of the steel trust, held up our heads and 
felt more like men when we realized that we 
were in a sense stockholders in a business 
that put that trust completely in the shade. 
For example, the annual production of eggs 
in the United States is about 1,293,800,000 
dozens. At the average price of eggs the 
total value of these is $452,830,000 — nearly 
five hundred million dollars a year. Added 
to this, more than two hundred million dol- 
lars' worth of poultry is consumed. And 
this is only one item. Consider that in the 
State of Wisconsin alone the value of the but- 
ter and cheese products for a single year runs 
over eighty million dollars; consider that the 
wheat crop is worth annually considerably 
over a billion; that vegetables alone represent 
another annual value of over two hundred and 
fifty million and you get some idea of what a 
business the same farmer who is laughed at 
in the comic weeklies is doing. The crop for 
the year nineteen hundred amounted to more 
than three billion dollars. And that represents 
without a doubt another three billion of waste, 



NEW VENTURES 177 

for there isn't a nation on the face of the earth 
that so uneconomically plants and reaps and 
markets its harvest. Why shouldn't we farm- 
ers carry ourselves proudly? Why instead of 
being the butt and plaything of financiers 
shouldn't we hold those same men at our 
mercy? These were questions that before the 
winter was out more than one man asked of 
himself. 

One other point came up for discussion in 
the course of the winter and that was the ques- 
tion of specialization; of whether as a commu- 
nity it would pay us better to center our efforts 
upon some one line such as dairy products, 
meat products, vegetable products or what not, 
or whether it wasn't better as small farmers 
with no particular advantages of soil or market 
for us to carry on diversified farms. On the 
whole the latter was the opinion of the school 
experts and also carried the strongest appeal 
to the majority of us. If every man kept at 
least one cow, a hog or so, a few sheep and a 
few hens, he first of all was then in a position 
to supply himself — and after all a man is his 
own best market — and secondly it gave him a 
more regular income as his stock didn't de- 
velop for the market all at one time; and 



178 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

thirdly, he didn't put all his eggs in one basket. 
A man specializing for instance in poultry is 
apt by disease to lose his whole flock and the 
same is true of his herd or his hogs. A di- 
versified farm makes a man independent of 
market conditions. If poultry is low and eggs 
high he can keep his pullets for eggs. If beef 
is low and butter high, he can keep his cows 
for milk and vice versa. In other words, he 
isn't forced to sell at certain times regardless of 
what the market is. 

One thing however was insisted upon, that 
so far as possible a man should keep the best 
of each kind. This led to the subject of breed- 
ing, and this led in turn to the question of 
whether to this end it wasn't possible for us 
as a group to invest in a common breeder — 
a blooded bull, a blooded ram, which as indi- 
viduals none of us could afford. And this 
again led, as about everything we touched upon 
that winter had led, to the question of closer 
cooperation. Two hundred years ago the In- 
dians and various other forces which to-day 
seem to us only romantic led our ancestors to 
cooperate in a certain way; to-day economic 
conditions are bringing about the same result. 
In February the one thought that was upper- 
most in the minds of us all was cooperation. 



CHAPTER XIII 

GETTING TOGETHER 

For two winters we had met together and 
amused ourselves together. That was what 
counted — counted even more than the work we 
had done together. Perhaps you wouldn't 
think that this social intercourse and the es- 
tablishment of this common pioneer back- 
ground was of any great importance, but if 
you had been one of us you would surely have 
felt its importance. It made us one big family 
as nothing else in the world could have done. 
Church societies build up as many barriers as 
they break down; so, too, do fraternal and po- 
litical societies. But here we went back to a 
meeting ground which kept us shoulder to 
shoulder with one another and with our com- 
mon past. Men and women can be entertained 
together when nothing else is possible. 

Then again, I don't suppose city folks know 
what a New England winter means to a New 
England farmer. Winter doesn't mean much 

179 



i8o NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

in the city except a complication with coal bills. 
Routine work goes on in the same routine way 
and the amusement of the beaches is shifted 
to the amusement of the theaters. But in the 
country Nature shuts up shop and there is a 
complete change of work and way of living. 
It's a period of exile for many and a period 
of loafing. Men and women are shut up with 
themselves, or at best with their own. Six 
months of this isn't good for anyone. Every 
old spite and grudge and grouch fattens and 
grows strong. Men get surly and women get 
cranky. Men eat too much and women cook 
too much. If a man hasn't any pet grievance 
of his own he has plenty supplied him by the 
press and magazines. Farmers read too much 
of murders and sudden death, of corruption in 
business and politics and society. They have 
too much time to think over that stuff after 
they've read it and they don't exercise enough 
to work it off. City folk stand it because they 
read and forget and don't take it seriously. 
But I tell you some magazine publishers have 
something to answer for in the picture of city 
life they have drawn for country people 
whether true or not. As I've heard Hadley 
say, " 'Pears to me like everything's rotten to- 



GETTING TOGETHER .i8l 

day." It makes men careless about being rot- 
ten themselves when they think all the rest of 
the world is. 

The value of our meetings didn't end with 
the meetings themselves. People who had 
been born and brought up together met in true 
neighborly fashion for the first time through 
the Pioneer Club. This was because we fur- 
nished them a common interest. This led to 
more everyday intercourse that winter — to 
neighborhood calls and neighborhood parties. 
Ruth helped this along wonderfully. She en- 
tertained a good deal herself and helped others 
entertain, but I tell you she had her own ideas 
how this should be done. She wouldn't have 
any fuss and feathers, such as we had experi- 
enced in the suburbs. People didn't have to 
dress up in their best bibs and tuckers to call 
on her, and there was neither bridge nor cakes 
nor teas nor ices. People dropped in just as 
they were and brought their sewing with them. 
For the younger people she devised the Miles 
Standish play with such materials as she had 
at hand. Then there were charades and old- 
fashioned games and what not — everything 
simple, everything inexpensive, everybody 
friendly and at ease. She kept the women, 



1 82 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

both young and old, astir all winter long and 
gave them something else to think about be- 
sides the next day's cooking, washing or mend- 
ing. She even helped them simplify these 
necessary duties and taught them a more 
wholesome standard of living. From morning 
till night she was a teacher, but no one except 
myself realized this. She set everyone an ex- 
ample in her house and astonished them with 
the ease she did her own work and cared for 
three children without wearing herself out. 
They never found her too busy to stop for a 
moment and never discovered her with either 
a headache or a lame back. Over and over 
IVe heard her say to them, ^'Housekeeping is 
only a play game." Then she would laugh 
until you couldn't help believing that it really 
was. And to her it was. God bless her — to 
her it was. It was wonderful how far the in- 
fluence of her laughter carried. 

And all this while we had been strengthen- 
ing the pioneer idea, too. We found that older 
people responded to its spirit almost as eagerly 
as boys do to the same thing in a simpler form 
as expressed in the Boy Scout movement. 
There isn't a boy with red blood in his veins, 
whether raised in New York, London or a 



GETTING TOGETHER 183 

country village, who isn't stirred by the hardy 
principles that govern your true scout. It's 
amazing to see how much of that spirit is in 
their blood; how gladly they return to more 
primitive conditions. Boys brought up in lux- 
ury taste their first real meal when they munch 
a slice of bacon sizzled over the embers of a 
wood fire or a potato cooked in the ashes. 
They learn the real meaning of sleep when at 
the end of a hard day's hike they roll up in 
a blanket in the open. Boys are born pioneers 
the world over — even to-day. The spirit is 
educated out of them in many cases, more's the 
pity, but after all it remains at the basis of 
every real man. 

So when at our meetings, directly and indi- 
rectly, we harped upon this idea and argued 
that the fun of living was within ourselves and 
not outside ourselves; when we insisted that 
the more we depended upon things outside our- 
selves for happiness, the less we responded; 
when we argued for a simpler standard in our 
clothes, our food, our surroundings, our amuse- 
ments and a heartier dependence upon our 
work, we saw its effect. Much has been said 
about the advantage to farmers of the tele- 
phone, the rural mail which keeps them in daily 



i84 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

touch with the outside world and labor-saving 
devices which make their work easier, but hon- 
estly I believe that if in the end this saves them 
from some evils it brings evils of its own which 
they haven't yet learned to overcome. If these 
things save them from drudgery and monot- 
ony of one type it isn't long before they face 
drudgery and monotony of another type, when 
they are allowed to dwell upon that feature 
of their work. There isn't in the world a big- 
ger drudge leading a more monotonous life 
than your city clerk who keeps agents scouring 
the world to furnish him amusement for his 
idle hours and to make the routine of his work 
lighter. And he's just as apt to go crazy as 
your lonely farmer if he doesn't learn to seek 
the joy of living within himself and not in his 
surroundings. 

We tried particularly to get at the young 
man in our town and make him feel it isn't the 
wilderness and virgin land and homesteads 
that makes your pioneer, but facing bravely 
whatever conditions may confront him, rely- 
ing upon his own efforts to win through them. 
It takes as much of a pioneer to work three 
acres as one hundred and sixty; a man is as 
much of a pioneer who forces worn-out land 



GETTING TOGETHER 185 

to yield, as one who clears virgin land of rocks 
and stumps. It isn't the nature of the work 
but the attitude of the man towards his work 
which distinguishes the plodder from the 
pioneer. 

It is especially easy to appreciate this fact 
when dealing directly with Nature. Every 
farm is a newly claimed homestead, if you 
choose to look at it that way. And even if it 
has been worked a hundred years there isn't 
a season when there is not real pioneer work 
to be done. As for the raising of live stock, it 
is done to-day much as it was two hundred 
years ago, except for greater attention to de- 
tails. 

It may seem strange to some that just a fresh 
point of view on the same old world makes so 
great a difference. It didn't however sur- 
prise me, because I had sensed the effect of 
this in my own life. If in the days when 
things were going well with me as a clerk with 
the United Woolen Company anyone had told 
me that I'd come down to digging in the sub- 
way as a day laborer, I'd have felt disgraced. 
Such work seemed like sheer animal-like 
drudgery. So it is, if you go at it that way. 
On the other hand, when I saw it as the pio- 



1 86 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

neer work it really is, I went at it with better 
spirit than ever I did adding up another man's 
figures for him. 

Two abstract things then we had accom- 
plished besides the practical : the establishment 
of both the social spirit and the pioneer spirit 
among ourselves. We were together like one 
big family and we were working in a move- 
ment that might fairly be called the Man Scout 
movement. That's just exactly what it was. 
It was alive with just the same wholesome out- 
of-doors adventurous spirit that characterizes 
the boy scout movement. I guess it's a pretty 
safe bet that anything which appeals uni- 
versally to boys will appeal universally to men. 
It was so in our town anyway. 

The next step then — the cooperative step — 
came about naturally and almost inevitably. 
No one planned it and no one so far as I re- 
member suggested it. It would have been a 
dangerous thing to suggest directly. As a 
phrase it smacked of socialism and there were 
mighty few socialists in our town. Our in- 
heritance and our training was all against it. 
There wasn't a man so poor that even if he 
w^as willing to make a martyr out of himself 
would let anyone else make a martyr out of 



GETTING TOGETHER 187 

him. The worse off he was, the more inde- 
pendent he became. He would rather play a 
lone hand at a losing game than win by join- 
ing his troubles with those of someone else. 
Your bred-in-the-bone New Englander is a 
solitary man who, when pressed to the wall, 
turns and fights his own fight. He'll unite 
against a common outside enemy but not 
against his own. It's this spirit that made our 
nation, but it's this spirit too which is to-day 
destroying the man himself. With a closer 
knit civilization demanding cooperation he is 
as a rule so jealous of his personal rights that 
he balks. And after all, that's the pioneer 
spirit too. 

Coming into town as an outsider I was in 
a position to see certain things that were not 
apparent to those born and brought up here. 
That is always possible to anyone approaching 
a new business with his eyes open. I had 
found it so when I began work as a ditch dig- 
ger. Within a year I detected flaws to which 
those who had given their lives to construc- 
tion work were blind. I was unburdened with 
bewildering details and prejudices. So in this 
town my eyes were fresh and I viewed the vil- 
lage not altogether from the unit of my own 



1 88 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

farm but as a whole. I was a stockholder in 
a corporation owning a million and more dol- 
lars' worth of buildings and land, and employ- 
ing hundreds of hands. Consequently I was 
able to consider any new project not only as it 
affected my own small interest but as it 
affected the whole corporation. The question 
of raising our own meats then was not with 
me merely a question of keeping a beef, some 
sheep, pigs and chickens for myself but a mat- 
ter of saving the corporation the thousands of 
dollars which would result in the general un- 
dertaking. So it was natural enough to me 
when the matter of buying full-blooded breed- 
ers came up which were beyond the means of 
any one individual, to suggest that the Pioneer 
Club, which represented the corporation, should 
do something towards making this easy. I 
had no idea of any general cooperative plan in 
doing this, but the idea was just the spark 
needed to kindle that whole burning issue. 

We wanted a good Dorset ram which would 
cost in the neighborhood of a hundred dollars ; 
we wanted a good bull which would cost in the 
neighborhood of six hundred dollars. Unless 
a man went into either business extensively 
such an investment wouldn't pay. It seemed 



GETTING TOGETHER 189 

natural enough then for us all to club together 
and buy shares. But if we did this, why 
shouldn't we do more? There was the whole 
problem of marketing still confronting us. 
We had solved it in a crude way last spring- 
but that only served to show us what might 
be done with a perfected organization. Out 
of this was born with scarcely any talk, scarcely 
any planning and almost full grown, the 
scheme which finally welded us into one com- 
pact business firm — the Pioneer Products Com- 
pany. The idea had been growing all this 
time and we didn't know it. When we did rec- 
ognize it, it seemed so natural and obvious that 
everyone marveled that we hadn't thought of 
it from the beginning. It's merely another ex- 
ample of what a rut farming folk have fallen 
into. 

There isn't any business on the face of the 
earth that lends itself so readily to cooperation 
as farming. Every country village consists of 
a small compact body of men living side by 
side and almost to a man engaged in buying 
the same products, manufacturing the same 
products and selling the same products to the 
same market. And these products are the uni- 
versal necessities of life. It might be possible 



190 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

for men to get along without coal, without oil, 
without steel, even without beef, but they surely 
could not get along without wheat and corn, 
without vegetables, without eggs and milk. 
And yet these communities instead of holding 
the world by the throat are themselves the 
prey of the world even with their own products. 
With common interests, common foes, with a 
common plant and a common organization they 
still are the common victims of a hundred di- 
versified outside interests. This is solely be- 
cause the outside interests — like the banks 
— are allowed to treat with them as small weak 
units instead of as one large strong unit. And 
this after cooperation has been taught them 
by their government, by every business in the 
land, by every labor organization. It is, as I 
have said, this branch of the pioneer spirit 
which has been both their salvation and their 
undoing. But that it is possible both to pre- 
serve this and curb it we proved to our satisfac- 
tion with the Pioneer Products Company. 

Holt read up on the subject and he found 
that cooperative farming which was so novel to 
us in the East had long been in successful op- 
eration in the West and South. That's just 
the point. So are a hundred other good things. 



GETTING TOGETHER 191 

We in the East have urged our young farmers 
West until we have drained the East of its 
best. We have sent them forth hke mission- 
aries in such numbers that now we need some 
of them back as missionaries to ourselves. It's 
those same men in the West who have been 
first to seize upon the new ideas in agriculture, 
while their eastern brothers have gone along 
in the same old ruts. New England as a 
whole has been treated like one vast deserted 
farm not worth anyone's trouble. The Gov- 
ernment itself treats it as such. It's eager 
enough to spend millions on draining projects 
in Florida or irrigation projects in the West 
while there are whole townships in the State 
of Maine in as primeval a condition as they 
were at the landing of the Pilgrims. It's 
actually so. If Maine were located in Oregon 
it would be to-day the richest State in the 
Union. But as sure as fate the old world pio- 
neers will soon rediscover it if we don't our- 
selves, for to them Maine is the Far West. 

I find I get switched back to that theme ev- 
ery time I trace a new feature of our develop- 
ment. 

As I said, Holt read up on the subject of co- 
operative farming as he always read up on 



192 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



every new subject before tackling it. About 
the first thing he ran into was the history of 
the Eastern Shore of Virginia Produce Ex- 
change — an enterprise which reads hke ro- 
mance. Every farmer in New England ought 
to read it. Holt gave a talk on it before the 
club and everyone listened in amazement. 
Here was a good farming country settled by 
industrious well-meaning farmers who raised 
good stuff, but who in 1899 found themselves 
on the verge of bankruptcy. It was each man 
for himself and sometimes they sold their crops 
for half what it cost to raise them. As indi- 
viduals they couldn't reach their market with- 
out giving up their profits to commission men 
and railroads. Then someone organized the 
exchange and so poor were its members that 
a membership fee of only five dollars was 
charged with the privilege of paying only 
twenty-five cents down and the rest in install- 
ments. During the first year the organization 
shipped four hundred thousand barrels of pro- 
duce; ten years later it was shipping one mil- 
lion four hundred thousand barrels. It now 
handles every year one million barrels of Irish 
potatoes and eight hundred thousand barrels 
of sweet potatoes. During the last three years 



GETTING TOGETHER 193 

it has done an average business of two million 
five hundred thousand dollars a year. It has 
lifted a stagnant community into a prosperous 
community within a decade. 

Another example was the Southern Texas 
Truck Growers' Association which was or- 
ganized in 1905. At that time the farmers 
were producing about five hundred car loads of 
onions a year and not making a living from 
them. The following year they shipped nine 
hundred cars; the next year one thousand 
cars; the next year tw^o thousand cars, and 
in 1 9 10 twenty-five hundred cars valued at one 
million five hundred thousand dollars. 

We had twenty more such examples for en- 
couragement but we didn't need any of them. 
Our own needs suggested our own remedy and 
that spring the Pioneer Products Company 
took out its charter. 



CHAPTER XIV 

FINDING OURSELVES 

The Pioneer Products Company was capi- 
talized for three thousand dollars. Shares 
were sold for a dollar each, but each member 
was required to purchase five shares and not 
allowed to purchase more than twenty. Our 
object as set forth in the constitution was ''the 
buying, selling, and handling of produce; the 
selling and consigning of produce as agent of 
the producer; the inspection of all produce so 
consigned; and the owning and operating of 
whatsoever shall be deemed to the advantage 
of the producer.^' 

The active management was to be in the 
hands of the general manager, who was to re- 
ceive a small salary, and the secretary-treas- 
urer. One of the most important provisions 
reads as follows: ''All stockholders in the 
company shall be compelled to ship through the 
company." 

This was inserted as a protection against the 

194 



FINDING OURSELVES 195 

bribing of members by city commission men 
whose object might be to break up the organiza- 
tion by offering, for a time, higher prices. 

Our plan for distribution of profits provided 
that after all expenses were paid a dividend 
not exceedng ten per cent, mght be voted ; that 
after this a sum amounting to a tax of not 
over one dollar a share should be reserved 
from the surplus as a reserve fund, and the 
remainder distributed among members in pro- 
portion to the amount of business done. 

A board of five directors elected by mem- 
bers was to have general supervision of the 
business with power to adjust all grievances. 

There you have it in a nutshell. Our or- 
ganization was unique in that it was founded 

on a social club alreadv well established. We 

•1/ 

elected for the company the same board which 
had so successfully governed the club. I was 
elected secretary-treasurer and accepted the 
duty because I knew I was in a better position 
to undertake the work than anyone else. We 
elected Holt as manager and he accepted the 
position in a like spirit, although he knew it 
would demand a great deal of time from him. 
We couldn't have had a better man. He 
jumped into the offtce like one whose fortune 



196 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

depended upon the outcome. He began to 
make a thorough study of market conditions, 
and got into touch at once with two or three 
big commission men. He haunted the markets 
and asked as many questions as though he 
were a member of a congressional investigat- 
ing committee. He studied the transportation 
problem, and as a result soon sprang a brand 
new idea on us which went a long way towards 
making that first season successful. He had 
nosed around the city and found a second-hand 
auto truck which could be bought at a bar- 
gain. Our town was on a state road which 
was kept in good condition and he figured that 
by using the truck, counting in depreciation, 
interest and running expenses, we could effect 
a freight reduction of over fifty per cent, by 
transporting our own produce. Furthermore, 
this would leave us independent of train sched- 
ules and free to ship early or late as might 
suit our convenience. He was so enthusiastic 
over the project that he offered to contribute 
towards its purchase the salary of six hundred 
dollars we had voted him. I mention this to 
show what a fine spirit this man Holt had. 
It's the sort of spirit that would make a suc- 
cess of any reputable venture. Fm also glad 



FINDING OURSELVES 197 

to mention that the company for its part showed 
an equally fine spirit. The board recom- 
mended the purchase, and the stockholders to 
a man voted to accept the recommendation, but 
to a man voted not to accept Holt's contribu- 
tion. Now that's the sort of feeling that lies 
at the basis of real cooperation. That's the 
sort of feeling which the two previous winters 
had made possible. There w^asn't a man in the 
club who didn't appreciate Holt's efforts and 
want him to get a fair return for his work. 
That feeling was worth ten thousand dollars 
to the club. 

The next thing we did was to make a can- 
vass of the club to find out how many men were 
able and willing to add to their live stock. It 
was urged that every Pioneer Club member 
should keep at least a few hens and a pig, and 
there was none who was not ready to accept 
this suggestion. 

*'We oughtn't to find a member of this club 
buying an egg or a fowl from this time on," 
I said. "If by any chance a member does find 
it necessary he ought to buy of another mem- 
ber. It's absurd for any live dweller in the 
country ever to spend his good money for such 
things. It's more; it's a disgrace. 



198 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

*'A/[oreover we shouldn't find within an- 
other year any member of this club paying from 
twelve to fourteen cents a pound for salt pork, 
or sixteen cents a pound for lard, or twenty- 
five cents a pound for bacon, when it would al- 
most pay every man in the club to keep pigs 
for the dressing alone. Our forefathers would 
no more have thought of getting along without 
a pig than they would a well. No more should 
we. The packers have made it easy for us to 
buy rather than raise. So does everyone else 
who wants our money. That's the big tempta- 
tion which has been our undoing — this biting 
to the bait of the easiest way. It's nothing but 
a new form of taxation which we have been 
too indifferent to throw off, until now we have 
the habit and think we can't. It's a pretty safe 
guess that the easiest way is never the profita- 
ble way in anything. We've tried the other 
with poor results ; now let's try the new way — 
the pioneer way." 

The question of raising beef and lamb how- 
ever was not quite so general a one, as it took 
more capital. However we found some twenty 
men who were willing to undertake the experi- 
ment to an extent which made it seem worth 
while for the rest of the club to help finance 



FINDING OURSELVES 



199 



the undertaking. It resulted in the purchase 
of a Dorset ram and a good Holstein bull. A 
member was found who was willing to care for 
the animals in return for the free use of them 
himself. In addition he was allowed to charge 
a nominal fee which should cover the interest 
of the money invested by the club. 

This was in February, and a few weeks later 
with the stock fully subscribed we began our 
second campaign. As Holt made clear in a 
talk to the club this company was not in and 
of itself any royal road to fortune. It was no 
short cut to success. 

'It means harder work than ever on our 
part/' he said. *'The company will prosper or 
fail by our own efforts. Don't forget that be- 
fore we can sell anything we must have some- 
thing to sell. It may be different in Wall 
Street, but that's a cold fact in our business. 
We must have more produce and better pro- 
duce. Understand, it must be better. Now 
that we have given ourselves a name, that name 
must be made to stand for something. Up to 
now we have been anonymous, but from this 
point on we can't be. I want our name to be 
not only for our own protection, but for the pro- 
tection of our customers. I want the Pioneer 



200 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

Products Company to stand for the best and 
freshest and cheapest vegetables to be pur- 
chased. That's the boast Tm making; that's 
the boast I'm going right on making and you 
must back me up in it. You must turn more 
soil this year than last and you must give more 
care to your stuff. You must work harder. 
Don't forget that this isn't any easy way. For 
twenty years you've fooled around with the 
easy way — raising as little as you could with 
as little work as possible. This is the hard 
way — raising all you can and putting into the 
effort every ounce in you. But it's the only 
way, and if you'll stand back of me we'll make 
this the biggest year our village ever had. 
Are you back of me ?" 

''You bet we are," came a chorus. 

They proved it, too, by the preparations they 
made. We announced the same prize awards 
that we made last year. With the money 
which had been turned back and with the sur- 
plus we had made on our moving picture show 
we were able to do this without going to the 
local merchants. I'm confident, however, we 
could have raised from the latter twice as much 
as we needed if we had tried. For the first 
time in a generation they had found their cred- 



FINDING OURSELVES 201 

its decreasing to an amount that more than 
paid for their investment in the Pioneer Club. 
At the same time their business had increased. 
However, we didn't want our prizes to be so 
large as to make them an end in themselves, 
and we didn't wish to increase their number to 
a point that would destroy competition. Fur- 
thermore we didn't have half the need of stim- 
ulation that we had last year. Oiir people were 
now stockholders in a company and had the 
company to work for. Furthermore they had 
the inspiration of last season's success to urge 
them on. I tell you that just the decreased 
household expenses of last winter made them 
realize what it meant to keep their land busy. 

I figured that at least thirty per cent, more 
land was turned this spring. If our town had 
looked busy last year it was a regular bee-hive 
this year. We were also better prepared to 
do our own work. Several horses had been 
bought during the winter and many men had 
invested in plows and harrows so that they 
were able not only to do their own work but 
that of their neighbors too. We called in some 
outside help, but not much, which was a big 
satisfaction. 

There was little skepticism this season about 



202 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

the worth of the methods we had followed last. 
Everyone had had better crops than ever be- 
fore, even if in some cases they hadn't come 
up to all that had been hoped for. Also there 
had been a good deal of swapping of experi- 
ences during the winter with a result of much 
information in regard to seeds that was of 
value. I realized that in a general way 
wt already were beginning to sift out the 
things for which our land was best adapted. 
It was the beginning of specialization. I 
hoped however that this wouldn't be carried 
too far, because I believed and still believe that 
our success would lie more in the line of gen- 
eral farming than special farming. Above all 
things I believe that every community should 
first of all supply itself. That is a pioneer idea 
that spells safety. Every dollar saved is more 
than a dollar earned in most cases; it often 
amounts to two dollars earned. 

I had had such success last year with my 
potatoes that I determined to put in another 
fivQ acres, making ten in all. I expected Had- 
ley to approve of this inasmuch as results had 
contradicted every prophecy he had made. 
However, he only shook his head. 

"I say let well 'nuff be. Ye was just plurab 



FINDING OURSELVES 203 

lucky last year, but ef ye try again ye'Il lose all 
ye made." 

You can't beat Hadley's pessimism. If you 
fail he'll tell you he knew you would; if you 
succeed he'll advise you not to tempt fate again. 
So far as I know he was the only man in the 
village who was still stuck in his tracks. I 
tried once more to persuade him to till his own 
soil but he refused. He was living fairly com- 
fortably on the wages I paid him and was con- 
tent to let matters rest there. Even in the face 
of the profits he had seen me reap, he only re- 
plied, ''Ain't no use farmin' round here. Farm- 
in's dead." 

I kept my vegetable garden much as I had 
it before, but I put in another acre of white 
beans. Beans and potatoes — it looked to me 
as though any farmer in New England ought 
to make a living from those two things alone. 
They are as staple as gold and the market for 
them is unlimited. That is especially true of 
beans, for they keep indefinitely. 

I ought also to say that my apple trees this 
second spring showed the result of the care 
that had been given them. They looked so 
hardy and strong that it was almost impossi- 
ble to believe that they had the burden of fifty 



204 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

years' neglect back of them. They blossomed 
well and I expected a good deal from them. 

Li the meanwhile Holt was working harder 
than ever with a view to providing us with the 
best possible market. We talked over any 
number of schemes. We considered the ad- 
visability of hiring a market stall in the city 
market for our own produce, but that involved 
not only a good deal of expense but active com- 
petition with men who made retail selling their 
business. We couldn't afford to hire more help 
and it looked unwise to attempt to undertake 
this without the aid of an experienced man. 

Then we considered an attempt to work up 
a line of private customers and deliver our pro- 
duce to them direct. This again involved an 
initial expense for teams and men that we 
couldn't afford and also the services of someone 
who could give more time to the management 
of the project than Holt could spare. 

In the end it seemed inevitable that we 
should use a commission man. But — here's 
the point — we were now collectively in a po- 
sition to come to fairer terms with a middle- 
man than we had been as individuals. If one 
man handled all our produce he could afford to 
pay us more. Our experience with Barnes had 



FINDING OURSELVES 205 

been fairly satisfactory but he was only a com- 
mission agent and it didn't seem to Holt that 
he offered now as good terms as we ought to 
get. Undoubtedly we should have had to ac- 
cept those if Holt hadn't run across a young 
fellow by the name of Burlington. He was 
just the man we needed. He was a young fel- 
low starting in the retail business for himself 
and needed our produce as much as we needed 
him. Holt made fast to him at once. After 
his first interview with Burlington Holt came 
back to me enthusiastic. 

"He's the temporary solution of the selling 
end," he exclaimed. "He has the market stall, 
he knows the game, and he has a clientele. 
That much he has already invested for us. 
Now what I propose to do is to take him into 
partnership." 

"Have you got as far as that with him?" 

''Not yet," answered Holt, "but that's what 
it's coming to. If we give him stuff enough 
he can afford to handle it on a basis of ten 
per cent, over his expenses, which will be an- 
other five per cent. That's some better than 
the thirty per cent, that we've been paying." 

"It surely is," I agreed, "but he hasn't agreed 
to it yet." 



2o6 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

"Not yet," answered Holt without showing 
any sign of being worried. 'Tm going to 
bring him out here some Sunday and show him 
our plant/' 

A week or so later Holt brought Burlington 
out. He was a clean-cut, wide-awake young 
fellow of thirty and I liked him at once. We 
had him up to dinner and after that took him 
to drive around the village. We showed him 
some five hundred acres of land under cultiva- 
tion — under real cultivation. We showed him 
acres upon acres which had been harrowed and 
worked until they looked like front lawns ready 
for seed. We told him that the produce from 
every inch of that ground would pass through 
the Pioneer Company except what was used at 
home. It was just like one big farm. 

He was amazed. Then he exclaimed, "Say, 
you fellows have hit it right if you can keep it 
up." 

"Just you watch us," I said. 

He laughed. 'T don't need to watch any- 
one but Holt here," he answered. "And, be- 
lieve me, I certainly have got to watch him if 
I'm going to make a cent out of the deal." 

"Don't get that idea," Holt broke in, taking 
him seriously. "We want you to make a fair 



FINDING OURSELVES 207 

profit and we'll see that you do. We want 
you to feel like one of us — a sort of partner/' 

"Hadn't thought of it that way," answered 
Burlington, ''but I believe that's the right way 
to look at it. And say, I wouldn't mind living 
out here myself. Anything in farms to be had 
around here at a reasonable figure?" 

"Is now," I answered, "but there won't be 
five years from now." 

I didn't know whether he was in earnest or 
not, but less than two months later he bought 
the Smalley place — a good house and ten acres 
of land at the lower end of High Street. That 
was a good move for him and a good move for 
us. It gave us confidence in him and made 
him really one of us. He joined the Pioneer 
Club at once and I sold him five shares of stock 
out of my twenty in the Pioneer Products Com- 
pany so that he could join us, though I hated to 
part with it. There were some who were sus- 
picious of his motives, but I wasn't, and it 
wasn't long before he proved himself one of 
the live wires of the company. His knowledge 
of the market was invaluable to us, and later 
on was an important factor in guiding us con- 
cerning what to plant. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE GOOSE HANGS HIGH 

Things went well with us that second sea- 
son. Much of the novelty of the undertaking 
had worn off but none of the enthusiasm and 
everyone settled down to hard, steady work. 
The prizes were still a big incentive and the 
hundred dollars in new bills which Holt con- 
tinued to exhibit in Moulton's store window 
was still as much a center of interest and ex- 
cited curiosity as money in a museum. But 
there was more a feeling of security and con- 
fidence than the year before. Our past suc- 
cess was somewhat responsible for this, but 
the Pioneer Products Company was more so. 
There seemed to be a feeling now that we were 
on a solid business basis. The cooperation 
idea — the mere fact of organization — and the 
sight of stock certificates made our members 
feel more like real business men than ever be- 
fore they had felt in their lives. And that was 

208 



THE GOOSE HANGS HIGH 209 

good for them. It steadied them and made 
them take their work more seriously. 

That was a good season for crops. Our 
small stuff came along early and did well. By 
the last of June we were shipping lettuce and 
radishes and by the first week in July early 
peas. Of course hothouse stuff had been in 
the market long before this but Burlington was 
able to quote prices that furnished him a ready 
market. Not only were the prices right but 
produce was right. There isn't much doubt 
but what stuff grown in a normal way without 
being forced has certain qualities that you can't 
get in hothouse products. The longer I farm 
the more respect I have for Nature as a busi- 
ness partner. She is always square and above 
board but she is also a stern mistress in the 
matter of justice. You can't ever get some- 
thing for nothing from her. She'll beat you 
every time you try it. If you try to hurry her 
well and good, you can, but you'll pay for your 
early stuff at cost of flavor. If you go in for 
flavor, well and good, but you'll pay for that at 
the cost of size. Let her alone and she'll bal- 
ance things. 

We shipped eight hundred dollars' worth of 
produce the last week in June and through July 



2IO NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

our shipment amounted to three thousand dol- 
lars a week, jumping in August to five thou- 
sand dollars and over a week. Holt appointed 
an assistant to see that everything submitted 
was up to standard. This man had authority 
to discard anything offered, but any farmer 
who felt that he was being discriminated 
against could submit the refused article that 
night to Holt. It may be well to mention 
that not a man disputed the first judgment that 
summer. As members of the corporation they 
realized that it was as much to their interest as 
anyone's to preserve our standard. 

Our motor truck was a great success, re- 
ducing our transportation charges almost fifty 
per cent. Not only this, but as time went on 
we found that at the same cost it would have 
paid for itself in the matter of convenience 
alone. We reached the market earlier and 
were able to make, as we did later in the sea- 
son, two and three trips a day, so always get- 
ting our stuff to the market fresh. 

Early in September, when we began to get 
new potatoes and early apples, our sales jumped 
to six thousand dollars a week. Some of this 
we shipped by freight. Never before had any- 
one in our town, except Dardoni, ever marketed 



THE GOOSE HANGS HIGH 211 

his early apples. A few bushels would be 
taken to the store but as a rule what couldn't 
be made into pies or eaten by the small boys 
were allowed to rot on the ground. As for 
crab apples — and nearly every farm had at 
least one tree — what a few housewives did not 
put up in jelly met the same fate. IVe seen 
bushels of plump red crabs rotting on the 
ground. But not this season. In the first 
place, Ruth all winter had urged the wives to 
put up more preserves and the result was 
marked. Farmers had to get up early to get 
ahead of their wives and gather any to send 
to town, but they found a ready market for all 
they could send. I reckoned as clear profit to 
the village every apple sent and the total 
amounted to a good many dollars. 

For that matter you could reckon as clear 
profit about all the garden stuff we sent for 
it's certain it represented money which until 
now had not been coming in. Potatoes and 
beans were all that had ever found their way 
to market until now. When I look back I won- 
der how these people ever lived on what they 
raised. In any real sense they didn't and what 
was true of our town is true to-day of a hun- 
dred other towns in New England. You can 



212 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

find conditions of poverty right out under God's 
blue sky that would make your hardened settle- 
ment worker shudder with horror. 

Everything went well with us that second 
season as I said, and for that reason it isn't 
particularly interesting to me. On the first of 
October we found that we had done a business 
of sixty-seven thousand eight hundred dollars. 
In round figures this left after deducting com- 
mission and expenses sixty thousand dollars. 
Out of this we declared a ten per cent, divi- 
dend to stockholders, which amounted to six 
thousand dollars. Three thousand more, or 
one dollar a share, we put aside into our re- 
serve fund. This left fifty-one thousand dol- 
lars to be distributed on the basis of the amount 
of produce turned in. We had that year four 
hundred and twenty-one members which made 
our net profits figure up per capita a little over 
one hundred and twenty dollars. 

Now it's impossible for anyone to figure on 
whether that was a fair return for the amount 
of capital invested in our plant or not. In the 
first place that doesn't by any means represent 
the value of our produce. You must take into 
account the amount consumed by our home 
market, the amount in hay and corn and pota- 



THE GOOSE HANGS HIGH 213 

toes and beans and what not which we kept 
on hand for winter consumption and a hun- 
dred other things. And besides — and this is 
something I want to emphasize over and over 
again — if you could figure the total it would 
all be beside the point. The fact which counted 
with us wasn't whether or not we were getting 
full value from our plant as yet. We weren't, 
and we knew it. The point was that we were 
getting something where before we got noth- 
ing. If we hadn't shipped five thousand dol- 
lars' worth of produce that second season we 
should have called our enterprise a success. 
We had waked up! We were trying! We 
were using our opportunities! Our old men 
were interested and our younger men enthu- 
siastic and our women were alive. 

In looking back — and I don't have to look 
back very far — I realize more than ever that 
the Pioneer Products Company, which ex- 
presses the result of our labors in dollars and 
cents, is by no means as important even now as 
the Pioneer Club which expresses itself princi- 
pally in pleasant memories. The Pioneer 
Products Company is making us secure with 
modest bank accounts, but it is the Pioneer 
Club which has made us Sam and Josh and 



214 



NEW LIVES FOR OLD 



Frank and Bill to one another, and our wives 
Sam's wife and Josh's wife and Frank's wife 
and Bill's wife. It's the Pioneer Club that has 
made us glad we're living even if it's the P. P. 
C. that has made it possible for us to live. If s 
the Pioneer Club that has made our town dear 
to us and has made us proud that we live here. 
It's the Pioneer Club that is the heart of us 
through the long winter months, though we are 
busier then than we used to be. And it's the 
Pioneer Club again that is keeping us sane and 
healthy in our prosperity. 

We are becoming better pioneers every year, 
though there are people who think we are go- 
ing back. We don't care an awful lot about 
electric lights and cement sidewalks as some 
of our progressive neighbors do. We have 
the best streets within fifty miles of us and 
we are content to walk in them or in foot- 
paths along the sides. We get along very well 
with kerosene lamps and on a pinch can use 
candles. We have good schools and in them 
are using some methods copied from our South- 
ern neighbors. We try as far as possible to 
teach arithmetic and farming together, read- 
ing and farming together, geography and 
farming together. It's just as good exercise 



THE GOOSE HANGS HIGH 215 

we find for our young folks to figure out how 
much five bushels of potatoes at a dollar ten 
a bushel will amount to as it is for them to 
figure out how much five times one, decimal, 
one and a cipher is. It's just as easy for them 
to learn to read by reading about flowers and 
simple gardening as it is about how the cat 
caught the rat. It's just as interesting for 
them to learn the physical geography of the 
world, not as a separate study, but as part of 
their dry-as-bones boundary statistics. 

We are encouraging athletics in the schools. 
We are backing the school teams with our at- 
tendance at their games and our applause. 
It's a fact that the average country boy needs 
gymnasium work more than the average city 
boy. He needs the training, the drill and rou- 
tine work. 

We are teaching our girls to cook and sew. 
We are teaching them to cook and sew econom- 
ically. Both our women and our girls were 
getting into the baker shop habit. When we 
started in we were buying city-made bread. 
Think of it, in the country of home-made bread, 
where we have both material and time! We 
don't buy much baker stuff now. 

We don't buy as much patent medicine as 



2i6 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

we did. In the first place, there isn't a store 
in town — not even the drug store — which car- 
ries it any more. A man wouldn't dare. If 
you want any of the stuff you have to send 
to town for it, and while this is still being done 
no one lets anyone know he's doing it. Those 
with the habit get it and swallow it the way 
they do their rum and most of them know 
pretty well that this is all it is. 

A sad event, which was at the same time a 
mighty good thing for our town, was the death 
of Dr. Wentworth. "Doc" Wentworth as he 
was known to everybody, had been here forty 
years. He was a big-hearted, well-meaning 
type of family physician, but the amount of 
morphine he prescribed would have disgraced 
Chinatown. It was his one antidote for pain 
and he'd give it for a toothache. He gave it 
to man, woman and child. Half the children 
in town took paregoric from the time they were 
born until they were old enough to take 
straight morphine. It was wicked. I went to 
one of the big medical schools and had a talk 
with the Dean and recommended this village 
as a promising field for some good young physi- 
cian. The result was that a young man set- 
tled among us of whom we have grown very 



THE GOOSE HANGS HIGH 217 

fond. He is with us heart and soul in pre- 
venting disease instead of fostering it. 

We don't own as many automobiles as some 
of our neighbors, but we have some good horses 
— good work horses and good driving horses, 
I hope to see better stock every year. IVe a 
two year old I wouldn't swap to-day for the 
finest automobile ever manufactured. Our an- 
nual fair is developing more and more along 
the lines of the old time fair. We are exhib- 
iting more horses and cows and pigs and chick- 
ens because we have some now worth exhibit- 
ing. We have developed quite a business of 
selling off some of our surplus stock at this 
time. We find that the neighboring towns 
wait for this event to select their breeders. 

To go back to the Pioneer Products Com- 
pany for a moment I may say that our business 
has increased steadily every year. Some 
things we have dropped because we find no 
further need of them. For instance the com- 
pany owns no more breeding stock. Our more 
prosperous members conduct that end of the 
business themselves. We have, however, 
bought a store house. 

We are planning a new experiment. We 
found that a surprising lot of our trade was 



2i8 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

among my old Little Italy friends. They be- 
came permanent customers. As time has 
gone on we have also developed a regular 
clientele outside of these — people who know the 
Pioneer Products Company by name. Our 
scheme for next season is to put up a family 
hamper to be delivered regularly through the 
season. This will contain enough of the new 
vegetables to last a family a week. We divide 
our produce into firsts and seconds and deliver 
the firsts to those who can afford to pay a little 
more. The seconds will go mostly to Little 
Italy. The latter will be good vegetables — 
fresh and sound, differing from the firsts only 
in size. Burlington is to have charge of the 
distribution on his usual commission basis. He 
is our manager now, by the way, paying his 
salary out of his commission. This method 
will give us a steadier market. 

Now about our experiment in raising our 
own meat. That, too, has been a fair suc- 
cess. The local butcher fought us for a little 
while but his fight was hopeless. Understand, 
there was no attempt to boycott him or any- 
thing of that sort, but we were most of us 
raising our own poultry and pork and besides 
that we weren't eating as much meat as we did. 



THE GOOSE HANGS HIGH 



219 



Still there was some demand chiefly for beef. 
We made a proposition to the man; that we 
turn into him what meats we produced for the 
local market and that he handle them on a 
basis of ten per cent, net profit. He thought 
it over for a little while and then accepted. 
He has made a good thing out of it and so have 
we. 

I don't want anyone to get the idea that our 
town is any Utopia. It isn't. It is nothing 
but a steady^ prosperous farming community 
where everybody is a hard worker. We aren't 
doing half of what we might, but our satis- 
faction comes in knowing we are doing more 
than we did. As the years go by we hope to 
do more. There isn't any reason I can see 
why as a town we shouldn't be in the position 
of any well-conducted city business increasing 
our efficiency and with that our profits. Real 
estate has almost doubled here, and this hasn't 
been a fictitious doubling. It is based on what 
land is worth to the investor who becomes one 
of us and uses his land intelligently. No one 
can buy land in our town, loaf on it and share 
our prosperity. We aren't dividing any profits 
except among those of us who earn them. 

People have come to our town and tried to 



220 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

locate the secret of our modest success m our 
land, in the cooperative idea, in our favorable 
position to the market, in just our bull luck. 
Most of these men and women haven't sense 
enough to be v^orth bothering with. I haven't 
much patience with those who look to find the 
solution of all our difficulties in some arbitrary- 
system that doesn't take the individual into 
account. But now and then comes along a 
man who is in earnest. Then I take him 
around and introduce him to Josh Chase. He 
sees a long-legged, thin-faced fellow with skin 
as bronze as a skipper's. Then Josh takes the 
visitor over his ten acres of land with the pride 
of a king. He shows him a new barn and all 
his carefully cared for farming implements. 
He takes him into a modest story and a half 
white house and introduces him to Mrs. Josh 
and a couple of rosy-cheeked children. With 
half an eye the man can see that here is pros- 
perity of the best kind. 

"Well ?" the man is apt to ask me. 

"He isn't afraid of the rain any more," I 
say. 

"Well?" 

"That's all. It means he isn't afraid of 



THE GOOSE HANGS HIGH 221 

work. He's up at daybreak every morning in 
the year and his work isn't done till dark. But 
you wouldn't pick him out as a slave, would 
you? He doesn't look like a poor downtrod- 
den savage, does he? He's a man with a hoe 
all right but is he making any bid for your 
sympathy?" 

'That's because your cooperative idea — " 

'The company would have failed the second 
year if Josh had been dependent upon that idea 
and not the idea upon him. No, sir, that man 
came over in the Mayflower but he didn't land 
till about five years ago. If you don't believe 
it I'll show you another man who came over a 
little earlier and who isn't a member of our 
company because he doesn't need even that 
help." 

Then I take him round and introduce him to 
Dardoni. 

He meets the smiling black-haired Italian 
and sees the latter's busy acres and meets an- 
other type of pioneer. 

If, after this, the investigator is of a mind 
that prosperity is so common hereabouts that 
anyone can succeed, then I introduce him to the 
awful example. That's Hadley. 



222 NEW LIVES FOR OLD 

Poor old Hadley — even he confided in me the 
other day that if he felt real pert next spring 
he thought he'd put that patch back of his 
house into potatoes. 



THE END 



FEB 19 1913 



<,♦ 



UBRARY OF CONGRESS 





D00E7Hfl3^Eb 



M 





